


No More in Darkness, No More in Night

by BreTheWriter



Series: Hold Me Like You'll Never Let Me Go [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Past Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2384042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreTheWriter/pseuds/BreTheWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the Asset.</p>
<p>He is the Winter Soldier.</p>
<p>He is a weapon, a blade honed to perfection and then kept in a sheath, a gun cleaned and loaded and then locked in a cabinet, an object to be used and put away until needed. He is a machine, a thing, an <i>it.</i></p>
<p>He is a man without a country, without a past, without a face, without even a name.</p>
<p>He is running.</p>
<p>And someone is catching up...</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More in Darkness, No More in Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SilverTempest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverTempest/gifts), [purpleyedemon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleyedemon/gifts).



> So here it is, Bucky's story! I hope you enjoy it. Title is taken from "I Saw the Light" by Hank Williams.

            He is the Asset.

            He is the Winter Soldier.

            He is a weapon, a blade honed to perfection and then kept in a sheath, a gun cleaned and loaded and then locked in a cabinet, an object to be used and put away until needed. He is a machine, a thing, an _it._

            He is a man without a country, without a past, without a face, without even a name.

            He is running.

            It is the longest he has been awake since _they_ got ahold of him, since they began the repetitive cycle of capture and torture and mind-wipe and cryo-freeze. Before, he was never out for more than two days. It was something they often bragged of—that he could be thawed, given a mission, and complete it within forty-eight hours, usually less. If he started to remember, if he started to think, they would punish him and then wipe him. And after twenty-four hours, he always started to remember. He learned quickly not to tell them he remembered unless they asked. The trouble was that they always asked.

            He has now been awake for one thousand, seven hundred, and fifty-two hours. Seventy-three days. Ten weeks. Two and a half months. In that time he has not been captured, has not been tortured, has not had his memories taken, has not been frozen. He has no mission, no purpose, no one he must kill, nothing he must destroy.

            He has only to run, to hide.

            He knows he is being followed, being tracked, being _hunted._ Someone is after him. He does not know who that someone is, only that he will not lose his newfound freedom, he will not go back to that. They will never make a weapon of him again. He is his own person.

            If only he could remember who that person _was._

            Every day, every hour, more memories return, more of his past comes back. The trouble is that the memories are unhelpful. He wants to remember who he is, remember what he was like before he was the asset, before the Winter Soldier, but all he remembers is _after._

            Sometimes, in the darkest parts of the morning, he wonders if there even _was_ a _before_.

            He remembers missions, countless missions, being given a weapon and pointed at a target. Shots fired from a distance, bombs thrown under cars and bullets pumped into the forehead just to be sure, always be sure to shoot, nothing is more final than a bullet. No names, just faces, men with dark hair and men with fair hair and the occasional woman, people who were supposed to die and people who were collateral damage, they always told him it did not matter who else died as long as the target was dispatched.

            The faces haunt him when he sleeps, which means he sleeps very little. He has no desire to sleep anyway, it reminds him too much of being frozen, but sometimes weariness overcomes him and he finds a place where he will remain unnoticed, he lies down and closes his eyes and lets the darkness claim him. But he always dreams, he always sees faces, streaked with blood, accusing and angry, and he wakes after all too short a time and pushes himself onward.

            He wants to name them. He longs for the ability to put pencil to paper and draw the faces that crowd his memory, to commit them to a visible medium to share with people, _excuse me, who is this man, who is this woman, who were these targets, tell me their names_ , because if they have names they will no longer haunt him, he can apologize. But he cannot draw, he cannot even sketch, he does not have the gift that made him swell with pride to see it in…

            Who?

            He closes his eyes, grits his teeth, grinds the heels of his hands into his temples, but he cannot remember, cannot call the name to him, cannot even recall the face. He only knows that it is important.

            That is the missing memory that haunts him the most, and also comforts him, despite its absence. He does not know the face or the name, but sometimes he remembers a voice, a sensation, and he knows that it is from _before._ He grasps for it, tries eagerly to catch it, to fill it in, but it eludes him, like sparks on a summer night. It leaves him empty and aching.

            Instead, he remembers fire and death and terror and pain.

            He gets to his feet and darts from his hiding place and continues on his path. He remembers a place, remembers it from _after,_ and he decides that if he cannot sleep, if he can only remember fire, he will create more.

* * *

            HYDRA. He remembers that they are called HYDRA.

            He was never told more than was good for him when they thawed him, or more accurately more than what was good for _them._ They gave him a location and a mission, handed him the appropriate weapons, reminded him of what awaited him if he failed, and set him loose. He was never officially told anything. But he heard the word HYDRA thrown about, above his head, behind his back.

            It is an odd thing, the word HYDRA, the concept of the organization. It belongs to _before,_ but it also belongs to _after._ Sometimes he wonders if he is muddled, if he has gotten confused, but the harder he thinks, the more he knows. He knew about HYDRA _before._ And after three weeks of freedom, three weeks of hiding and visiting the museum and avoiding whoever is chasing him, he is even able to sort out _what_ he knew, and what he was told _after._

            _You helped shape the century,_ the man told him, his handler, his jailer, his _torturer,_ the man who took over after Zola died—he can remember Zola’s name, will never forget Zola’s name even if he never remembers his own name, but he cannot remember the name of the second man; he wonders if he ever even knew it. The man may have spoken the literal truth, but he made it sound as though he had a choice, as though he knew what he was doing—as though he made a _positive_ difference. He remembers now what he knew about HYDRA _before,_ and he knows that none of it is positive. They are danger, they are terror and disease, they are fear and despair and death, they are kidnappers and torturers and murderers.

            They are the enemy.

            They are evil.

            This is a small facility, an underground bunker, computers and lab tables. He stopped here once on a mission, when his weapon jammed and he had to switch it out. Then he had not yet begun to remember _before_ , he was a perfect soldier, a perfect weapon, he did no more than what he was supposed to do, he was no threat to them.

            He is certainly a threat now.

            The scientists do not at first react when he strides into their midst, they assume he is there on their business. Their attitude changes in a hurry when he takes a weapon from the wall, aims at the man he remembers to be the leader, and fires through his heart. When they see this, they react, they attempt to subdue him. Not one of them attempts to run, to reason with him, not one begs for his life or the lives of others, they instead go for weapons and alarms and phones and anything they can get their hands on.

            Because they do not ask for their lives, he does not grant them their lives.

            Twenty minutes later, he tosses a small device over his shoulder and runs for it. He emerges into the night, darts to a safe distance, and stands impassively and watches the fire. He hears the sirens and sees the lights and stays back in the shadows, watching and listening, and he thinks, _One down. All the rest to go._

            He turns and walks away.

* * *

            That night he rests on the roof of a building, huddled in a dark corner, his knees to his chest and his eyes vacant as he stares outward.

            It is at night that he tries the hardest to catch those elusive memories, the ones from _before,_ partly because it keeps him from thinking about _after,_ but also because those few memories he _does_ have of _before_ are comforting. And as frustrating as it is to not be able to drag out more of them, he can calm himself by running over the memories he does have, over and over and over again.

            There are not many of them, fleeting impressions mostly, moments here and there, nothing that lasts a long time—a sound, a smell, a taste, a flash of color—but he treasures them all, and he stares out into the darkness and brings them up, not sure if they are in the correct order but almost not caring.

            He remembers a park, familiar well-worn paths, watching the change of seasons as he walks, brisk through drifts of snow or slowly through a sunlit day, remembers unlocking a door and making a report regularly, _the crocuses are up by the fountain, you’ll have to come with me to see them on Saturday._ But when he tries to remember who the report was for, tries to conjure up a face or a voice or even a smile, the memory evaporates, dancing just beyond his grasp, and he does not know if whoever he was talking to ever went to see the crocuses.

            He remembers sitting on a pier, throwing rocks into murky waters to listen to the sound. He remembers a wooden structure, curving high over his head, laughing as he coaxes someone to join him, but he cannot remember who the someone is or what the structure is called. He remembers rain on a window, lying on his back on the sofa and watching it, aware of the presence of another in the room and comforted by the knowledge that they are both warm and dry and safe.

            He remembers faded red velvet seats, polished wood rests, laughter and voices and running feet and popcorn being thrown about, sitting in the same seat every time, the face next to him changing, a series of women whose faces blur together, less interesting than the images on the screen before him, tilting his hat on his head and imitating a voice, delivering a line, making the women’s hearts flutter and knees buckle…

            _You oughta be in pictures._

            He stills at the memory of the voice, a quiet voice, half-laughing, half-admiring, said with a smile and said _often,_ but it is not the voice of a woman he hears, but a voice of a man, a voice he both does and does not recognize, a voice that at once means everything and nothing…

            It is a voice remarkably similar to that of the other.

            The other is the man on the bridge, his last mission, the blond man with the shield and the mask, the man who seemed to recognize him, to believe he was something more than he secretly believes himself to be. The other has a name—Captain America—Steve Rogers—but it is easier for him to think of him simply as _the other,_ because the other gave him a name, insisted that he knew him, and if he allows himself to think of the other as Captain America or Steve Rogers he will begin to think of himself as being what the other thought he is.

            He wraps his arms a little more tightly around his knees. When he had been awake for a week, he went to the museum, the Smithsonian, wearing long sleeves that hid his metal arm and a ball cap low over his eyes, and went through the exhibit on Captain America, the newly revived hero. He ignored the information on Captain America, keeping his eyes downcast, afraid that if he looked on the face of the other it would bring the memories of what he had done on his most recent mission rushing back too hard and he would fall apart in the middle of the museum, hurt someone, hurt _himself_ , but he focused on the information about the men Captain America fought with, the men called the Howling Commandos, and most particularly on the man the other claimed he was.

            Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes of the 107th Regiment.

            He does not know how long he stood before that display, reading the short biography over and over again until it was indelibly imprinted on his brain, until he was sure that, even if he is recaptured and tortured and wiped, he will remember every word. He studied the face, too, studied its contours, studied the tilt of the head and the line of the jaw and the shape of the eyes, and then he made himself look at the pictures without looking at the other, seeing the way the man called Bucky Barnes looked.

            He is certain that the other is mistaken, that he is not that man. Whoever he is, he cannot be a man who smiles so brightly, who laughs so heartily, who looks on anyone with the warmth he bestowed on the other in those pictures.

            And yet, and yet, and yet.

            _That man on the bridge…I knew him._ He said that to his jailer, knowing he would be punished, knowing those memories would be taken away, but he hoped that if he admitted he only knew a little, they would give him more. They did not, they tortured him and wiped him and froze him and they gave him nothing, but he knows now, just as he knew then, that he was right, their very reluctance to give him anything told him everything, he _does_ know the other, or at the very least, he _did_ know him.

            Which means the other belongs to _before._

            He looked at the other men in those pictures, the other men who called themselves the Howling Commandos, trying to see if he could perhaps have been one of them, but he is able to discount them out of hand. One is a small Asian man, one a round-faced black man, one the wrong body shape, and one whose face he remembers.

            He saw the face of the man with the neat moustache in the bowler hat, the man with the big gun, and he had to turn and walk quickly out of the museum and go outside and hide until he stopped shaking, because he remembers that face, remembers it well, but not from _before,_ it is a face he remembers from _after,_ but _after_ did not have a name to go with it.

            It is a face from a mission, he does not know how many years ago, time is fluid and unhelpful, but it is a mission he remembers, _this is your target, find him and destroy him,_ an older face by then but still the same, a snowy tundra, a distraction, a group that separates the target from the team surrounding him and leaves him free to complete the mission, he walks towards the target, and the target does not run, does not try to fight, the target freezes for a split second, eyes wide with surprise, but that is long enough, and he raises his gun and the man cannot defend himself and he puts a bullet in his forehead and another in his chest and returns to report a successful mission and he is repaid with another mind-wipe before being returned to the cryo-freeze.

            But that day in the city, a chilly sun peeking around light gray clouds and people swarming in and out around him, when he stopped shaking, he returned to the museum and put a name to the face, and he stood before the picture, _Timothy Aloysius “Dum-Dum” Dugan_ , and he silently apologized, silently begged forgiveness. And that face stopped haunting him, so he thinks that he may have received the forgiveness he was looking for.

            He racks his exhausted brain, tries again to discover how he knows the other, because he cannot belong to the circle the other thought he did, but the memories will not come, and he bows his head to his knees and waits for morning.

* * *

            His memories of  _after_ have come through thick and fast, he is fairly certain he remembers all of them now, and he is going to make HYDRA pay for every last one of them. In the dark of the night, he admits to himself that he is not so much  _certain_ he remembers all of them as he is  _hopeful_ , because he does not want to have any more faces haunting him.

            Nor does he want to remember any more of the horrors he endured, any more of the tortures, any more of the fear and pain. The fear that has dogged his every waking moment is another reason he doubts the other’s word; the man immortalized in the museum is a hero, a brave man, a man who surely would not have turned a hair at the sorts of things he had undergone, a man who would not have trembled with fear every time he was strapped to the machine, a man who would not have so much as whimpered when the device turned on.

            A man who would have stopped to listen to the other when he tried to convince him that they knew each other, who would not have denied it so strenuously, terrified at what they would do to him if he admitted again that he knew the other.

            The night after firebombing the small facility, he takes out another, this one larger, and while the majority of the scientists and soldiers attempt to fight him like at the other, there is one noticeable exception, one that sticks with him.

            It is a scientist, hardly more than a boy, with thick horn-rimmed glasses and a dark complexion, who drops the clipboard in his hands when he walks in, tries to run, trips and falls to the ground. When he walks over, weapon in his hand, the scientist is sobbing.

            “Please…please…” he half-whispers. “Please.”

            It stops him. He levels the weapon at the scientist and says in a low growl, “Give me one good reason why I should let you go.”

            He expects an appeal to his better nature, an offer of information or money or other assets, some low, corrupt attempt at bribery or coercion. Instead, the scientist reaches into a pocket with trembling fingers and withdraws a wallet, opens it to show him photographs of a chubby, laughing baby with dark curls and liquid brown eyes. “My baby…my little girl…please, _please,_ I’m all she’s got, please…”

            He stares at the scientist, and the scientist stares back, shaking, tears rolling down his cheeks, and a soldier runs over and yells, “ _Richards! Grab him!”_

            The scientist flinches, and he turns and fires at the soldier, who collapses, and then he throws a table out of the way and yells, “ _Run!”_

            The scientist scrambles to his feet and stumbles towards the door. He follows, shooting anyone still standing and covering the scientist’s retreat, and he is initially angered (and a little afraid) when the scientist ducks down a side hall rather than going for the main door, but an instant later the scientist emerges with something pressed tightly to his chest, and he hears a high, thin wail.

            The baby.

            Fury courses through him, and he charges up and kills anyone who so much as looks at the scientist or his child as they run desperately for the door. The moment he is certain they are safe, he launches another of his firebombs and emerges into the night.

            The scientist has run to the edge of a small strip of woodlands and stands against a tree, soothing the bundle in his arms. He makes his way over to them, unsure what motive pulls him towards them but knowing he must ensure their safety before he can move on. “Is she all right?” he asks.

            “She’s fine,” the scientist says softly, stroking her hair lightly as he bounces back and forth. “Thank God, they didn’t hurt her.” He looks up, his eyes shining with tears. “Thank you. I can’t thank you enough…I know I don’t deserve…I worked for them, I’m part of…”

            “That’s no reason to punish her,” he says gruffly. He wants to reach out and touch the baby’s cheek, almost wants to ask if he can hold her, but he resists, he keeps his hands to himself and turns to look at the conflagration. “Do you have somewhere to go?”

            “Yeah. I’ve—my mom lives in the City.” The scientist pronounces the word with a capital C, as if there is only one city in the world. “She’ll put me up without asking too many questions until—until I can find somewhere else. Somewhere safe.”

            He gives one short nod, acknowledging the man’s statements, and wishing there was some way for him to stay in touch with this scientist, this man who could plead for his life, the life of his child, while literally sobbing in fear, this man who is braver than he can imagine himself being. “What’s her name?”

            “My m—oh.” The scientist presses his lips to the top of the baby’s head. “Cecilia. Her name’s Cecilia.”

            “And yours?”

            “Richards. Malachi Richards. Thank you so much for letting me get her out…her mother died right after she was born and they took her out of my arms…” The scientist—Richards—kisses his daughter’s forehead again. “She’s somethin’ special, all right.”

            He looks upwards at the sky and notes the oncoming clouds, swirls of charcoal and lead, that begin to creep over the moon. “You’d better get her somewhere safe and dry before the storm starts,” he tells Richards. “Take care of her. Raise her right.”

            “I will. I will.” Richards starts to turn, then stops and moves closer to him. In a low, urgent voice, he says, “There’s a stronghold just north of Jersey City, under the old refinery, they’ve been doing experiments to try and create new super-soldiers—they threatened to send Cece up there if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. Entrance is located under the foreman’s office. Be careful—they know you’re on the move, they’ll be waiting for you.”

            He stares at Richards for a moment, but the scientist does not look at him again, he adjusts his grip on his daughter and darts away into the trees. He turns back to watch the building burn, pondering what he has just been told. He puts two and two together, realizes what Richards meant by _threatened to send Cece up there,_ and grinds his teeth.

            Turning on his heel, he melts into the darkness, bent on finding out where he is, and the fastest way to get to Jersey City from there.

* * *

            It takes him twelve hours to get to Jersey City, running through the shadows and avoiding people and roads and—above all—the train tracks.

            There is a freight train that goes directly from where he is to Jersey City, and it would be a simple matter for the Winter Soldier to grab onto a boxcar and ride it without being seen, child’s play, but he cannot do it, he cannot even conceive of the idea, he cannot even go _near_ a train. He tries, to be sure, he slips into the rail yard and spots a train preparing to pull away and he gathers himself to run, but just as he draws close to the car he stumbles, nearly falls, and has to press himself into the shadows behind a cargo container, back flat against the side of the container and knees drawn up to his chest and hands digging into the ground, screwing his eyes closed and attempting to remember how to breathe.

            _He struggles to find a foothold, a better handhold, but it is impossible with the rushing wind and the speed of passage…a voice yells his name, begs him to hold on, he tries as hard as he can to comply, he reaches for the hand stretching out to his, struggles desperately, but the metal is tearing itself loose, it will not hold, one side rips away and he knows with dread certainty that the other side will fall away too…_

            He knows that he fell from a train, and he knows that it was _before._ He realizes for the first time that it was the fall that mangled his left arm, that caused it to be so damaged that HYDRA chose not to wait for it to heal. He remembers the agony as they dispassionately ripped the ruined limb from his shoulder, callously cauterized the wound, and ruthlessly attached the metal surrogate he has carried ever since, he does not know how many years ago it was. That is the first memory he has of _after._

            He releases his hand, his real hand, from the ground and grips his other shoulder tightly, as if he can will it back to flesh and bone, as if he can press out the memories, but the pain is all too vivid, the memories too real. He trembles and shakes and tries desperately to get himself under control, and eventually, after far too long, he manages it.

            For that reason, he ends up running the entire way to Jersey City.

            When he arrives, it is the middle of the day, people are going to and from work, mostly ignoring him, but that is all to the good, it gives him the chance to scope out the lie of the land, make sure of his target, and ascertain his avenue of approach.

            It also gives him a long stretch of time to worry over what he will do when he finally does go after this facility. If he understood Richards correctly, this is more than an ordinary HYDRA outpost, it is a research facility for a specific experiment, the creation of super-soldiers…and it is not hard for him to guess, from the fact that they threatened to send Cecilia Richards there if her father did not fall into line, that the test subjects, the guinea pigs, the lab rats, are in fact innocent children. The thought makes him grind his teeth with rage and hardens his resolve to destroy every last one of the murderers and torturers within the facility, but it does present him with an additional problem, because he will need to rescue the children before destroying the facility, yet he cannot risk exposing himself to the authorities, even long enough to bring the children to safety, and besides that he does not know where to take them.

            He still does not have a firm plan when darkness falls and he approaches the entrance to the facility, creeping silently through the ruins of the refinery, but he knows he needs to spring now while he has the chance, he cannot wait another day, he cannot take the risk that anything will happen to their victims. He takes a deep breath and he goes in.

            Richards was right to warn him, they are ready for him, he gets through the front door and is met with a piece of rebar to the face. He blocks it with his metal arm, rips it out of the hands of his assailant, and jams it through the man’s chest, then through the chest of the man sneaking up behind him, before throwing it aside and snatching the weapons from both.

            The advantage to losing the element of surprise is that it gives him all sorts of fun ways to improvise.

            No one in this facility pleads for life, or for the lives of others, no one runs in fear, they are determined to capture him or kill him instead. This puzzles him at first, until he has cleared the first three rooms and remembers what this facility is for, remembers that they are attempting to replicate the super-soldier serum or develop something better. They want him alive so that they can experiment on _him,_ too, so that they can determine what worked with him and replicate that in their helpless victims, so that they can use him as a combination guinea pig and benchmark.

            He will not allow them. He will not allow anyone to capture him again, will not allow them to torture or experiment on him, will not allow them access to his body or his mind without his full permission and cooperation, will no longer be an unwilling participant or stand by as things are done to him, _by_ him, against his will. He uses the weapons he confiscated from the dead men at the door, and when they run dry, he tosses them aside and uses the weapons available to him, pieces of equipment, jagged bits of metal, anything he can get his hands on.

            And then he reaches the labs, he has to smash his way through the doors, and two annoyed-looking scientists raise their heads from their tables, and he _freezes,_ he stares for almost a full minute, his body perfectly still. He has found the room where the super-soldier experiment is being run, he has found the victims.

            He expected children. He never expected _infants._

            One of the scientists presses a button, and a moment later doors open, soldiers come pounding in, and he roars, he lets out a primal noise of absolute rage as his vision becomes tinged with red, and he launches himself forward. The soldiers are well-trained, well-disciplined HYDRA fighting machines. But even under ordinary circumstances, they could not hope to hold their own against the Winter Soldier for more than a few minutes, and right now he has gone beyond his programming, has gone beyond what HYDRA made him to be.

            He is thirteen years old, just a kid from Brooklyn, walking home from school and nearly tripping over a scared boy bolting from an alleyway, looking down the alley and seeing the three biggest boys in the neighborhood beating up on—on _someone,_ he can’t picture who it is—but just like now, he sees red and launches himself at them, his protective instincts rising, threatening to choke him. Now, however, he has three things going for him that he did not have in that alleyway: super-strength, years of training, and a metal arm that can do a fair amount of damage on its own.

            It takes him less than five minutes before the soldiers stop coming and he stands alone in the center of a pile of corpses, breathing heavily as the red mist fades from his eyes, and he can focus on the victims.

            There are seven of them altogether, each one clad only in a diaper, laying on cold, unfeeling, metal beds covered almost carelessly with cheap white sheets. Their arms and legs are strapped tightly to the tables, restricting their movements and preventing them from pulling out the myriad wires and tubes attached to them. Each bed is labeled with a series of letters and numbers that mean nothing to him, but which he presumes to be some sort of internal code, some way of tracking the tests and results, there is no other indication of identification, no sense that HYDRA saw them as anything other than test subjects, as experiments.

            He moves over to the nearest, studies the child, feeling something tight and hard in his chest that he cannot identify for a moment, until his brain prompts him with _pity._ He cannot tell if the baby is male or female, can only tell that it is small, with a fine dusting of black hair and a worried expression. A thin tube snakes from its arm to a nearby bottle that seems to be supplying it with nutrients, a wire clipped to its foot goes to a machine monitoring its vital statistics, which also seem to be normal.

            All the other wires are attached to things he knows far too intimately. He feels his eyes begin to grow hot and moist as he looks at the helpless child. As much as he never wants to experience the pain and torment he underwent at the hands of HYDRA ever again, he now realizes that he would gladly—or at least uncomplainingly—suffer through it every day for the remainder of eternity if only it would prevent them from inflicting those tortures on a helpless child. He longs to fix it, to take the pain away from this child—from _all_ these children—to draw it to himself.

            The child moves its head fractionally, lets out a soft whimper, and he gives a small whimper of his own. With swift, decisive movements, he rips the restraints from the table, yanks the wires free of the devices—to remove the electrodes from the infant’s skin would require finesse and delicacy to avoid hurting it—and scoops the baby into his arms without a second thought. He holds it to his chest, the way Richards held his daughter, rocking it, caressing its soft cheek with his fingers, his real fingers. The baby wraps one hand in his shirt and looks up at him with wide, dark eyes, and he wonders that it does not cry, wonders if it even knows how or if it, like him, has come to associate tears with torture and so learned, even at this young age, not to cry.

            He hates to put the child down, but he knows he must, knows he cannot risk disrupting the IV line lest he do irreparable damage—and besides, there are the others to consider. Gently, reluctantly, he places the infant back on the table, grateful for the shallow sides that will keep it from rolling off the bed and hurting itself, then moves around the room, pulling wires and breaking restraints one by one, until all seven infants are unattached and free, free of the tortures they have been forced to endure, and then, only then, does he sit down on a stool to think.

            Had they been the children he expected, he would simply order them to follow him, lead them out of the facility and firebomb it behind him and figure out where to take them when it was done. But that is not an option here, and he knows he cannot carry seven babies on his own, especially not seven babies who are as incredibly frail as these seem to be, seven babies who, even if they are old enough to walk (which he doubts, they seem so young), have probably never learned how. He has no way of getting them out of the facility, and he cannot possibly leave them behind.

            At last, he decides that all he can do is to get out, to call in an anonymous tip to the police and see what happens. He is reluctant to do that, because he suspects that this is beyond their capabilities, he thinks the infants need special care, but he cannot think what else to do. There is an organization he was set against, but he does not know how to contact it, does not even know its name, so he cannot expect any help there.

            Hardly knowing why he is doing it, he circles the room, bends over, and presses his lips to each infant’s forehead, the way Richards did with Cecilia. Each baby turns towards him as he does so, looks up at him with wide eyes that have already seen far too much, brown and green and blue, but all haunted already. He can only hope that they are young enough that time and care will remove that horror from their eyes, but he wonders if that is true, wonders if the experiments that have been done to them will give them the same kind of memory that he has, a memory that will never permit them to forget what they have undergone, if they will live the rest of their lives quiet and fragile and afraid. With one last, lingering look, he exits the facility, feeling like a traitor as seven pairs of eyes follow his progress out the door.

            In the ruins of the old refinery, he moves some way from the door and presses himself into the shadows, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing deeply, wishing he could cleanse his mind of what he has just seen, wishing he had been able to take even one infant out of the room. As he prepares to move on, he hears voices and stops, peers out through a hole in the wall, to see a group of people in black moving cautiously around, no more than a hundred yards from the entrance to the facility. He counts five of them, three women and two men, and narrows his eyes, wondering how they got by him and how to best take them by surprise.

            “I think he got away,” says one of the men, dark-skinned like Richards but slightly older, with close-cropped hair and a scowl on his face.

            “He sure didn’t get any farther than this,” says the youngest of the women, holding up a device. “He’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

            He assumes they are talking about him until the oldest woman speaks. “Which means there’s a HYDRA facility around here, somewhere. We should go carefully. Just the five of us aren’t going to be enough to handle a whole team of HYDRA.”

            They are not HYDRA, he realizes, they are something else, maybe the organization he was always set against. Whatever they are, they can rescue the babies, they can take care of destroying the facility afterwards or preserve it as they want. But after a few moments, it is obvious that they do not have the first idea where the facility is. The youngest woman crouches with her device, obviously scanning for something, but the frustration on her forehead proves she cannot find it, and the others do not even have that, something which obviously agitates the third woman. “I could get the drones, sir,” she says, her accent unusual, his memory of _before_ helpfully prompts him with the word _British._

            “No good,” says the voice of the remaining man, whom he cannot now see. “Too much interference from the old refinery, I think, or whatever they’ve got at the facility. Either way, that’s probably why Skye’s scanner isn’t working, and it’ll just confuse the drones. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

            _The old-fashioned way,_ he thinks, biting the inside of his cheek as he looks down at his feet, an idea beginning to form in his mind. _I can work with that._

            He stoops and picks up a broken bit of masonry, nothing too large, scarcely bigger than a pebble and relatively smooth-sided. He selects the woman with the British accent on the basis that she is both the nearest and the most obviously at a loss for what to do and shies the pebble lightly in her direction. His aim is true and catches her on the side of the arm.

            “Ouch!” she cries, jumping and gripping her arm.

            The younger woman looks up. “You okay, Simmons?”

            “Yes, I’m just—something struck me. I suppose it was a bug or something.”

            He stoops, picks up another piece of stone, and throws it again, a little harder. This time it strikes the woman in the shoulder, and this time it has the desired effect, she jumps and turns in the direction of his trajectory, scowling. He turns quickly, but deliberately not quickly enough, allowing her to see the flash of _something_ as he turns away from the hole.

            It works, he knows it has worked as soon as he hears the woman call, “Sir! There’s someone in there!”

            He advances twenty yards closer to the entrance to the facility, crouches and waits until he can hear the sound of pursuit, pushes a chunk of concrete over as though accidentally before quickly moving closer to the door, lures them on as best he can without allowing them to actually see him. At last, when he judges they are in the correct position, he grabs a sufficiently large piece of rubble and rolls it swiftly at the door, causing it to bang open and swing shut, then retreats to a safe distance and waits.

            “I think he went in there, sir,” says the darker-skinned man.

            “Take it easy,” cautions the other man. He still cannot see the man, but it is obvious that this is the leader from the way the others call him _sir._ “I’ll go down there and—”

            “No,” says the oldest woman. “It might be a trap. I’ll go.” Without waiting for a response, she moves forward, crouches in the shadows for a moment, then darts forward and bursts through the door. A moment later he hears her voice again, from the direction of the other group, but with a slightly tinny quality, as though it is coming over some sort of radio, which, he realizes, it probably is. “Two dead bodies in the entrance. Two very dead bodies. I don’t hear anything else, though.”

            “I’m sending Skye in with you, May,” the other man says.

            “Roger that.”

            The youngest woman hands her device to the other woman and copies the first woman’s moves, a bit more clumsily, he suspects that she is a novice. He waits silently, keeping absolutely still, his eyes fixed on the two figures he can still see, and then he hears the youngest woman’s voice, slightly hysterical. “Oh, my God—Coulson, you gotta get down here!”

            Then, and only then, does he turn and melt into the shadows, moving as silently as he can away from the team.

            He senses the presence of another person as he reaches the other end of the refinery, moves into the shadows and looks around, and there it is, a man bearing the unmistakable hallmarks of a HYDRA soldier, his face pointed and ferrety, his eyes narrowed as he looks in the direction of the facility and the team that is presumably rescuing the babies. The soldier listens for a moment to the sounds in the distance and smirks and turns to dart in the other direction, only to be confronted with him, standing directly behind him with his jaw tensed in rage.

            The soldier gives a gasp and tries to run, but he trips over his own feet and falls to the ground, scrabbles backwards for a moment, throws his hands up over his face and babbles. “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! I’ll do anything you want, just don’t kill me!”

            This is not a man who is pleading for his life on behalf of another, not a man who would ever consider doing the right thing, this is a man who would sell his own mother to save his own skin, and he has no sympathy whatsoever. He reaches out with his metal hand, grabs the soldier by the throat, and drags him upright, lifting him into the air, and the soldier gurgles unhappily and claws at the hand ineffectually, even though it is not actually seriously restricting airflow.

            “Tell me where the next facility is,” he growls in a low voice, “and maybe I’ll let you live.”

* * *

            The building has no value as a target whatsoever. It is not centrally located, nor in a strategic location, nor does it house anything of a military or political nature. It is, in fact, a run-down elementary school tucked away in the corner of the city.

            Yet his information tells him that this is where they will strike next. As he approaches it, he feels that odd tugging, the sense that he should know this place but does not, that this is important. And when he hears the screams begin, he does not hesitate, but plunges into the building.

            Chaos, danger, fear—the sensations are nearly palpable. He ignores the streams going past on the perimeter, focusing instead on the people in the middle. That is where HYDRA will be, he knows, in the center, where the most damage can be done…and that is where people will need rescuing. He cannot let them die.

            He runs as hard as he can, banking off walls and leaping over children’s heads as they run screaming towards the doors. Around one corner, he sees a pair of men in black, armed with weapons that do not belong in this setting; they fall back when they see him and he follows, knowing that he must stop them, he must not allow them to be loose in the building, he cannot let them hurt—

            Who?

            He falters for a moment, prodding his memory, but he cannot recall, he cannot come up with a name, cannot even recall a face. He only knows that there is a child who _must not be hurt,_ no matter what. Recovering himself, he takes off in pursuit of the men.

            He finds several pockets of men with weapons and takes them out, punches through barricaded doors to allow access for the children and their teachers. One little girl tries to grab him; he flinches away and her teacher hustles her out through the door, but she continues to look over her shoulder as she leaves. He feels a small smile cross his face—the first in many years—as he continues.

            He rounds a corner, pounds up a flight of stairs, and continues searching for men with weapons and trapped children. This floor is empty, for the most part, the doors hang open and papers drift and pencils roll and the children have run for their lives. He keeps running, searching but not finding, and he gets to a long stretch of corridors with few doors and no windows, old brick and rusty lockers. He keeps running.

            As he approaches an intersection, another figure runs out of a side corridor and nearly collides with him, a figure with a military bearing, wearing a light-colored t-shirt and a dark jacket and cotton pants—obviously not HYDRA, but not a teacher either—but he takes a step back, and then he sees who it is.

            The target. The mission. _Him._

            The other takes a half step back, his eyes widening, impossibly blue eyes. “Bucky?”

            This is not the time or the place, but he cannot help himself, he tenses, balling up his fists and taking his own half-step back. “I don’t know you!” he bursts out.

            “Yes, you do, Buck,” the other begins.

            “No. I don’t.” He is angry, _furious._ “I can’t. I can’t be who you think I am.”

            “You are,” the other insists. “I know you are.”

            “I _can’t_ be!” he yells. “I saw the sign!”

            The other looks taken aback. “What sign?”

            “At the museum. The Smithsonian. The sign about—your friend. James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes.” He remembers the sign vividly. Remembering things from after a wipe has never been an issue, otherwise he would have not been an asset, would not have been able to remember his missions, much less complete them. “I read what it said about him. I’m not that man.”

            “You—” The other stops himself. “What makes you say that?”

            It stops him briefly, too. The other is _listening,_ and that has never happened before, the other is always talking instead. But he rallies and tries to explain. “That man was a good man. I’m not. I’m a machine, I’m a weapon. This can’t be all HYDRA’s doing. I’ve hurt people. I’ve _killed_ people. I didn’t care. Sergeant Barnes was honest, he was loyal, he was altruistic, he was a good and faithful comrade…”

            Unexpectedly, the other’s mouth twitches, he gives this little half-smile. “He was a jerk.”

            He frowns. “What?”

            “He was my best friend, and he took really good care of me—I’d have trusted him with my life—but he was a jerk. He was stubborn. He got into fights—well, usually I started them and he finished them, but he _enjoyed_ them a little too much, I think. He could be pretty violent when he wanted to be. He was really sarcastic and he was always yelling at me for overreaching myself.” The other’s smile fades. “And after he went to war…he got bitter, he got a _lot_ angrier and more violent. He killed people, too—whoever he was told to kill, and I don’t think he ever really cared, not much. It used to worry me. He’d tell me to quit it and call me the name he always used to use and I’d call him what I used to call him and we’d go on like nothing had changed…even though everything had changed…”

            He stares at the other as the other’s eyes take on a faraway look. There’s something vulnerable in his expression, something almost broken, and again he feels that tug, the little voice in his mind whispering _this is important, this is special, this is mine…_

            Without warning, an explosion rocks the building. Both of them go into crouches, covering their heads as dust and debris rains down around them. He hears the roar and crackle of fire in the distance, lifts his head, looks at the other. Without words, without even conscious thought, they set off running down the corridor, towards the stairs and safety.

            Except the stairs are on fire.

            He skids to a halt, turns and heads off down a side hall, remembering the window at the far end, then glances back and sees that the other is fumbling for something at his waist. “This way!” he shouts.

            The other looks up in surprise, hesitates, then follows him, _why_ doesn’t matter, it only matters that he’s following, they’ll both make it to safety. He still doesn’t know why it’s so important that the other get to safety, but it is.

            The other catches up to him, they match each other stride-for-stride as they barrel down the hall, and he knows they’re going to do it, even though the rooms on both sides are burning, burning beyond the brick, they’re going to make it. They round the corner and that’s when they see it. Most of the floor has fallen away, except for about ten feet where they are and ten feet in front of the window, the rest of it is gone except for a narrow beam, six inches wide and a good forty feet long, smoke curling up from either side and flames licking at the floor.

            The other doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t break stride, just keeps running straight onto that beam, but he checks, he waits to make sure the other gets across before he moves, he has to make sure the other is safe before he can make the crossing himself.

            Once he reaches the other side, the other looks back, then stops and turns. “Come on!” he shouts.

            He’s about to put his foot on the beam when it happens. There have been smaller explosions following the main one, more or less constantly, but this one is close. He flinches and throws up his arms, shielding his face.

            When he lowers them, the beam is gone, flames shoot up through the hole, and there is no way to run across.

            The other is lowering his arms, too, his expression startled, almost scared, his eyes wide, soot smudging his face. “Come on! Hurry up!”

            He can’t believe the other is wasting time. The window is right beyond him, he can make it, he can be safe. “Go on! Get out of here!” he yells, waving violently at the window.

            The other looks shocked, angry. “No! Not without you!” he practically screams.

            He freezes. Suddenly he is not in a school anymore. He is in a warehouse, a prisoner-of-war camp, standing on a catwalk, looking down at a man in a green army helmet, and he is the one who is angry, he is the one who is refusing to leave, he is the one who makes the other leap the gap and brave the flames and _get out of there,_ he will not allow the other to stay behind, to burn to death, even to save him…

            There is an ominous creaking noise, and he snaps back to the present in time to see the beam of the ceiling over the other’s head crack, then begin to fall.

            “ _Steve!”_ he shouts, the name ripping itself from his throat. Without conscious thought, his legs bunch themselves beneath him and he launches forward, leaps the gap, clears the flames, barrels into the other, clutches him tight to his chest as they both sprawl to the floor and the beam slams into the spot where the other stood moments before.

            They stay on the ground for a moment as debris rains heavily down around them, and then he is on his feet, pulling the other with him. They run together towards the window and he punches it out with his metal arm, rips the frame away desperately, and they leap together, they grip one another’s hands and curl into balls and push away from the wall as far as they can.

            He hits the ground and lets go of the other’s hand as he rolls, then gets quickly to his feet. The other picks himself up, too, looking over at him. He decides to be angry for a minute. He deserves it.

            “Why didn’t you just go?” he demands.

            The other stiffens. “I’m not leaving you behind. Not again.”

            “Damn it, you have to be _safe,_ ” he practically shouts. “Don’t you understand that I need you to be safe?”

            “I can’t _do_ that!” the other practically shouts back. “I can’t just sit by and watch people suffer. I can’t watch _you_ suffer!”

            “And you think I’m gonna suffer less if you get yourself _killed?_ ”

            “You think it wouldn’t kill me to watch you die?”

            He shakes his head in disgust. “You’re a punk.”

            “Jerk,” the other says automatically, and it feels familiar again, it feels important. They both stop and look at each other.

            Sirens wail in the background, people shout orders, but the two of them simply stare at each other. Finally, the other speaks in a voice barely above a whisper. “You said my name.”

            He takes a hesitant step forward, he reaches over with a trembling hand, not his metal one, the real one, and he touches the other’s cheek lightly, feeling the light peach fuzz and the silky softness of his skin, warm and gentle, and he _remembers,_ he remembers wishing he could caress this cheek, remembers wondering what the skin would taste like, those pale lips, remembers wanting to know and explore every inch of this body…

            The other leans into his palm, perhaps unconsciously, and he shifts slightly, cupping the other’s cheek in his hand, his fingertips tracing lightly along the other’s jawline.

            “Steve,” he breathes.

            The other— _Steve_ —looks at him, and those beautiful blue eyes flood with tears. “Bucky,” he whispers.

            He moves forward in the same instant that Steve does, and they embrace tightly, and he remembers more, remembers hugging his best friend and cautioning him not to do anything stupid while he was gone and wishing he had the courage to admit to deeper feelings. He remembers the first taste of freedom and the first sight of his best friend after days, weeks, months of imprisonment, so different and yet still the same, just like Steve said, everything changed and yet nothing changed…

            They separate after a long moment, and Steve has tears in his eyes, staring at him like he might vanish. “I’ve missed you, Buck,” he says quietly.

            He wants to say _I’ve missed you too,_ longs to say it, but the words stick in his throat, he can’t lie, not to Steve, can’t say that he missed the man he could barely remember, the man whose name had gone out of his head, the man he now realizes formed the missing hole in his memories, the man he had convinced himself he didn’t know before the explosion and the flames and four shouted words recalled the best and worst moment of his life. He _wants_ to have missed Steve, but he only misses missing him.

            And then he hears a voice cry from somewhere behind him, a high and sweet and childish voice. “There he is! That’s him!”

            He turns, startled, to see a small figure running towards him, three adults hurrying behind, face shining and a smile on her upturned face. It is the little girl, the one who tried to cling to him when he broke through a barrier so that her class could escape. She reaches him and she throws her arms around his waist and hugs him tightly, and he is startled.

            “Thank you, thank you, _thank_ you!” she cries, her voice slightly muffled by his stomach. “You saved me!”

            He pats her back, not sure how to react to this, to a child who doesn’t need comfort, who runs to him first instead of waiting for him to go first. “Uh…you’re welcome.”

            The little girl lets go of him and steps back, smiling up at him with total trust and happiness, it’s a look he doesn’t think he’s _ever_ seen—well, no, he remembers all of a sudden that Steve used to look at him like that, too, when they were this age. “Thank you,” she says again as her parents catch up to her, and the police officer, her father putting his hands on her small shoulders. “What’s your name?”

            He glances up at Steve, who smiles a little, lifting his eyebrows slightly in encouragement, and then he squares his shoulders and holds his head high and turns back to the little girl. “My name is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.”

            The little girl’s eyes widen, and he knows what she’s going to say, cringes inwardly away from the praise he doesn’t deserve, but thank God Steve comes to his rescue. He explains to the girl’s family and the police officer that his friend is unwell, stresses that they don’t want any publicity, and once they leave, turns back to him. “Wait here, okay, Buck? I’ve gotta go get Sam, and then we can get out of here.”

            “Yeah. Thanks.” He manages a smile. “I’m not going anywhere.” _Not this time,_ he adds silently.

            As Steve walks away, he contemplates the name _Bucky._ He doesn’t mind Steve calling him that, not anymore, not now, but somehow he can’t seem to apply it to himself. He doesn’t _feel_ like Bucky Barnes. And he knows, instinctively, that he is definitely not _Sergeant_ Barnes at the moment, maybe not ever, maybe he never really was, he can’t remember ever really feeling comfortable in that skin.

            He decides to settle on James.

            Steve returns with a man that James recognizes instantly. He stiffens slightly, a little worried at what the man will say, considering that the last time they met, James ripped off one of his mechanical wings and probably did considerable damage to the man personally. He doesn’t seem terribly put-out, however, as Steve smiles slightly. “Buck, this is Sam Wilson. He’s been helping me look for you—and before that.”

            “I remember,” James admits in a low voice, lowering his eyes, sure Steve and Sam Wilson will both judge him. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

            Wilson doesn’t even flinch. “I’ll forgive you for that if you’ll forgive me for telling Cap here that I didn’t think you could be saved.”

            James raises his head in surprise, but there is no trace of either bitterness or levity on Wilson’s face. “I don’t blame you for that,” he says, startled to hear the words coming out of his mouth.

            Wilson holds out his hand, a smile—a genuinely friendly smile—playing about his lips. James hesitantly reaches out and takes the man’s hand, shakes it tentatively, then drops it and takes a half-step back, hugging himself as both a defense mechanism and a fear response. He’s fairly certain that Steve won’t hurt him, or allow him to be hurt, but he’s not one hundred percent about Wilson, not yet.

            A worried look comes over Steve’s face, and he reaches his hand out tentatively, then draws back and says quietly, “Come on, you two. Let’s go home.”

* * *

            “Man, what a pile,” Wilson says with a low whistle, craning his neck upwards to stare at the building.

            Silently, James agrees with him, but he’s too nervous and on the jump to say so. The street is fairly deserted this time of day—it’s early evening by now, they spent so long skirting the more populous areas of the city and sticking to shadows and back roads in order to make James a little more comfortable—but the building looming over them is intimidating, bigger than any apartment building he can remember.

            “This isn’t—this isn’t where we lived, is it?” he asks Steve uncertainly. His memory has more holes than Swiss cheese, he’ll be the first to admit that, but he decidedly does _not_ know this area and wonders if it’s even the same city as the city where he and Steve grew up.

            “No, God, no,” Steve says with a soft huff of laughter. “We lived in Brooklyn, this is Manhattan. And this place wasn’t even _around_ when we were kids. Welcome to Avengers Tower.”

            James’s eyes widen as Steve knocks firmly on the door. “Did you forget your key?”

            “Don’t have one yet,” Steve says, squinting upwards at the building as if calculating how long it will take someone to answer. “We’ve been on the move for the last couple of months—everybody was still in Malibu when we saw them last.”

            James can feel the beginnings of terror curling through his gut, and he wants to object, to plead with Steve to take him somewhere else or let him go somewhere else, but the words stick in his throat, threaten to choke him, and a moment later the door opens and a dark-haired man stands before them, a cheeky grin on his face. If James is any judge, this man is between ten and twenty years older than he and Steve are, in his early to mid-forties, but the expression is more that of a gleeful schoolboy. “About time you showed up,” he greets Steve cheerfully.

            “Excuse me for sticking with one goal until I achieve it,” Steve retorts.

            “Ouch!” the man says, putting a hand to his heart, but he’s grinning. “Come on in. I’ve got your cards up in the lab, and then you can come down and have dinner with us.” He frowns at them. “Where’s your luggage?”

            “Back at the hotel,” Wilson says. “I’ll go get it later.”

            Things are moving a little too fast for James to follow. He catches hold of Steve’s sleeve as they step into the building, telling himself it’s for Steve’s protection and knowing that he’s lying. Steve gives him a quick look, then pats his hand. “It’s okay, Buck…this is Tony Stark. Tony, meet Bucky Barnes.”

            _Stark._ James recognizes that name, but the name he remembers is Howard, not Tony. The face is just about right, though, almost matches the face he can vaguely recall, so he asks, “Are you related to Howard Stark?”

            “He was my father,” Stark says in an offhand manner as he inserts a card into a slot next to a pair of double doors.

            James stumbles and almost falls, would probably fall if not for Steve’s steadying hand under his arm, a look of concern on his face. “You okay?”

            James just shakes his head, unable to articulate properly. _He was my father._ Yet the man James recalls from the promotional materials, from the expo itself— _I ship out in the morning, I’d like you to come with me, one last time, c’mon, Steve, let’s go—_ could hardly have been more than thirty, was a notorious playboy, certainly was not married, had no children that anyone knew of, news like that would have been all over the papers. Which means it has been at _least_ forty-some years since that day, since James and Steve and a couple of dames whose names and faces he scarcely paid attention to watched Howard Stark proudly show off a prototype of a flying car.

            And he remembers none of them.

            “What year is it?” he asks Steve quietly, wishing he didn’t feel so exposed, so vulnerable, like he was admitting to some horrendous weakness.

            The look on Steve’s face is indescribable, a mixture of pain and regret and anger that James is pretty sure isn’t directed at him and something else, something harder to define. “2014,” he replies, his voice equally quiet. “It’s 2014.”

            _2014._ James swallows hard as those numbers sink into his brain. He remembers now that the day he fell from the train, the day that separated _before_ and _after,_ was May 2, 1945. Almost seventy years, and he has barely been awake for any of them. As the elevator ascends, partly to take his mind off of the panic and partly out of a genuine curiosity, he adds up the number of missions HYDRA sent him on and starts to multiply it by two until he realizes that he can recall roughly three hundred missions. Cumulatively, he doesn’t think he has been out of cryo-freeze for more than two years.

            The elevator doors open and Stark—it’s going to take James a long time to get used to the idea of him—steps out. “Come on,” he says over his shoulder.

            James follows the others, then checks unhappily. They are in the middle of a lab, and while the equipment doesn’t look _too_ much like the equipment in any of the HYDRA facilities he’s been in, it’s still lab equipment and it still worries him slightly. Inside, he feels a twinge of regret for that; he remembers that he used to _like_ science, used to actually dream about being a scientist, about maybe getting to work for somebody like Howard Stark one day, but now the idea of being surrounded by it makes his stomach twist in fear.

            Steve notices that James has fallen behind and he looks back, that same indescribable look on his face—James wonders if it’s his default face these days or if he’s just going to look at _him_ like that for the rest of his life. “C’mon, Buck. It’s okay.”

            “Your access cards are over here,” Stark says, striding over to a table and gesturing grandly. “This one’s yours, Bird-brain.”

            “Watch it, Sardines,” Wilson says, but he’s smirking as he walks over.

            “I deserved that.” Stark grins in reply.

            Wilson picks up something off the table and turns it over a couple of times. “Hey, this is pretty nice.”

            “Yours is in the middle, Capsicle,” Stark says.

            Steve flushes. “Quit calling me that,” he mumbles, picking up the card, and James feels a much more familiar emotion push its way through the terror—concern for Steve, and a certain amount of protectiveness. It’s the same feeling he had in the HYDRA facility when he looked down on those helpless, tortured babies, amplified to a degree that would surprise him if he hadn’t already remembered his secret feelings for his best friend, hadn’t already realized that Steve was the missing face from so many of his memories.

            “And this one’s yours,” Stark says to James.

            James starts with surprise. “I—what?”

            “Your card,” Stark repeats, pointing to the table. “I’d hand it to you, but it’s got a biometric scanner in it, so the second you pick it up, it’ll program itself to your fingerprints and your DNA, and nobody other than you will ever be able to use it—so even if someone steals it from you and tries to use it, it won’t work. And I made each one unique—basically—so there won’t be any mixing them up.”

            Hesitantly, James comes closer. He reaches forward with his right hand, the real one, and picks up the small rectangle of plastic sitting on the table. It’s a greenish-tan in color, with three dark chevrons trimmed in gold. He traces them with a single finger.

            “Sergeant’s chevrons,” he murmurs, half to himself and half aloud.

            “Sorry I couldn’t come up with anything more unique than that, but I figured, even if there _was_ anything distinguishing about the last seventy years, you wouldn’t really want to remember it every time you wanted to use the elevator,” Stark says.

            “Tony,” Steve says through gritted teeth.

            James turns the card over several times, then looks up at Stark, confused and a little frightened. “But—I don’t understand. How did you know I was coming?”

            Stark shrugs. “I told Steve to bring you with him when he found you. This place is big, it’s secure, and it’s private, so I figure it’s a good place for both of you to recover. And I knew he’d find you, sooner or later. I wasn’t sure _when_ you were coming, but I decided I’d better have the cards ready when you did.”

            James swallows, nods, and slips the card into a pocket. “Thank you,” he manages.

            Stark grins and comes around the table, clapping Wilson on the back as he passes. “C’mon, I bet you guys are starving. And Fitz’ll be happy to see you two. Too bad you missed the party.”

            “Party?” Wilson repeats with a raised eyebrow as they head back for the elevator.

            “When Fitz got his cast off two weeks ago, we had a little celebration,” Stark explains. “Actually, we ended up celebrating a couple of different things. But everyone was here but you guys, and I mean _everyone._ Even Pepper and Hill.”

            “He still in bed?” Steve asks, and James wishes he knew what they were talking about, but he’s reluctant to ask—not afraid, just reluctant.

            “Huh? Oh, no, Banner vetted him to get out of bed, like, a month and a half ago. There’s nothing physically wrong with him. And now that both his arms are free, he can get about by himself, so…”

            “Wait, what?” Steve says sharply.

            Stark looks momentarily guilty. “Oops. That’s right, you didn’t know about that.”

            “Know about _what,_ Tony?”

            “Fitz is…” Stark hesitates. “He’s lost the use of his legs. Temporarily. Banner says it’s psychosomatic—there’s nothing _physically_ wrong with them, and he can still feel them, he just can’t move them. He’ll recover, sooner or later. For now, though, he’s in a wheelchair.”

            Steve closes his eyes briefly, and James instinctively reaches over to touch him comfortingly on the arm, then checks himself, wondering if he deserves to comfort Steve, wondering if Steve even wants his comfort, vaguely remembering that Steve prefers to do things on his own even though he doesn’t have to. He tucks his hands under his armpits instead and desperately wishes he knew what to do.

            They arrive on another floor, the doors slide open, and Stark leads them down a short hallway, calling as he does so, “Hey, guys, look what I found on the doorstep.”

            James hangs back a little uncertainly as they reach a room that can only be a kitchen, an incredibly spacious one, with a table big enough to double as the Round Table. James’s first quick glance takes in four men and two women, but he’s almost afraid to take a longer look, not sure who will be looking back or what they’ll have to say when they see him. Wilson and Steve go in right behind Stark, but James goes no further than the threshold.

            “Friend Rogers!” one of the men cries, his accent one that James absolutely cannot place. “I am greatly pleased to see you in good health.”

            “Good to see you, too, Thor,” Steve says, and James can hear the grin in his voice. “Dr. Banner.”

            “Captain,” says one of the other men. “Welcome back.”

            It’s obvious these people know Steve, obvious they’re his friends, and James feels a momentary surge of jealousy, the same jealousy he felt when he first realized that his best friend had become Captain America, the nation’s hero. He also feels a renewed surge of panic, because these people are Steve’s _friends,_ they aren’t going to want to have anything to do with him, they’re going to hate everything HYDRA made him, he should leave now…

            He actually backs up as a woman’s voice says, “I don’t think I know you.”

            “Sam Wilson,” says Wilson.

            “And this is—” Steve begins, then seems to notice James’s absence, and he ducks out of the kitchen to look at him. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

            “Nothing,” James lies, knowing that Steve will see right through it, James is usually a good liar but he’s never been any good at lying to Steve, he’s gotten away with it twice in their entire lives, and he prays his stomach won’t growl and betray him as he adds, “I’m just not really hungry is all.”

            Steve’s eyebrows meet in a frown. “When’s the last time you ate?”

            “Uh—” James panics silently, caught out in a lie and not sure how long ago Steve will accept. “Last night?”

            “ _Buck._ ” Steve tugs on James’s sleeve and pulls him into the kitchen.

            The others are on their feet, all except one, milling about and chatting with Wilson. One of them, a big, burly blond man with long hair and a full beard, notices James first and takes a step forward. “You have brought another comrade to join us?” he asks, it’s the same man who called Steve “friend Rogers,” he must be foreign.

            “Yeah.” Steve smiles at James, lifting his eyebrows slightly, obviously offering to let him introduce himself if he wants to.

            Which he does, he realizes. Steve will just keep introducing him as Bucky and he really doesn’t feel like he deserves to be called that. Taking a deep breath, he says, for the second time that day, “My name is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.”

            “I am Thor, son of Odin,” the man announces, taking James’s hand and shaking it.

            “Uh—hi,” James says, a little startled. He remembers those names, remembers a rainy day, sitting in the children’s section at the public library, reading a book about mythology with his best friend Stevie, all about Thor and his magic hammer and something about drinking the ocean and wrestling with death, and at first he wants to object that this man can’t possibly have anything to do with that. Then again, he’s supposed to have been dead and here he is, and it’s been seventy years and neither he nor Steve seems to have aged a day, so maybe the idea of a god of thunder isn’t that farfetched either.

            The woman next to him has a slightly swollen stomach that, combined with how slim she is elsewhere and the way she has her hands folded over it, makes James think she might be pregnant. “I’m Dr. Jane Foster,” she tells him. “Astrophysics. I’m not…” She gestures vaguely at the other people in the room. “I’m kind of a tagalong. It’s nice to meet you.”

            “Nice to meet you, too,” James says, and wonders if it’s a lie, it doesn’t feel like a lie, but then it doesn’t feel like the truth either.

            His next introduction is to a young man in a wheelchair, his eyes wide with astonishment, probably not much older than James and Steve appear, maybe even younger, like Richards, hardly more than a boy. Stark ruffles his curls as he passes and says, “This is Agent Leo Fitz.”

            “It’s—it’s an honor to meet you,” Fitz says, stumbling over his words and gripping the arms of his chair tightly. “I’ve heard so much about you…”

            He doesn’t hold out his hand to James, which everyone else seems to be expecting, but the truth is that James is pretty relieved, the kid seems somewhat fragile and he would hate to hurt him, even accidentally. He’s afraid to ask what Fitz has heard, too, and all he manages to get out is, “Um.”

            Fitz crimsons. “Sorry.”

            James isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for. Then the other woman moves forward slightly, holding out her hand, and his worries about Fitz go out of his head as he takes in the red hair, the dark eyes, the shape of the face, and he accepts her hand and blurts, “Natalia.”

            There’s a flash of fear in the woman’s eyes, but it only lasts for a moment, she keeps her expression neutral. “Natasha,” she corrects him gently. “Natasha Romanoff.”

            It occurs to James that Natasha is a diminutive of Natalia, and she’s familiar, she’s so familiar, not as familiar as Steve is and she definitely belongs to _after,_ but she’s still familiar, and he says, hesitantly, “We’ve met before…”

            Natalia— _Natasha—_ lifts her shirt, showing him a scar on her abdomen. “Five years ago. An engineer I was escorting—you shot him through me.” She drops the shirt. “And I was helping Steve and Sam on the bridge.”

            _No, no, that’s not right, that isn’t what I meant,_ James thinks, he remembers where he knew her from now, she was much younger then but he remembers her. He stops himself from calling her on it, though, he realizes that for whatever reason she doesn’t want to talk about it— _well, let’s face it, I don’t really want to talk about it, either—_ so he just says, “I’m sorry.”

            “Don’t be. You weren’t in control.” Natasha drops his hand abruptly and moves back to stand next to Foster, her arms folded across her chest and her expression still neutral.

            Steve looks back and forth between Natasha and James, but before he can say anything, another man steps forward, this one older than Stark by the looks of it, with salt-and-pepper hair and dark eyes, not much taller than the two women, and holds out his hand. “Dr. Bruce Banner.”

            “Nice to meet you,” James says automatically, accepting the man’s hand and shaking it briefly.

            “Likewise.”

            “Dinner’s ready.” The fourth and final man places a casserole dish on the table, and as Natasha turns to open a cabinet, he looks up and comes towards James with a welcoming, open smile.

            And James can’t help the surge of fear that rises up, his eyes widen and he takes an involuntary half-step back, his arms locked around his midsection protectively. He recognizes this man, too, knows vividly where he knows him from, but unlike Natasha, unlike Wilson, he was not incidental to a mission, he was not a background figure to a mission, he _was_ a mission, the only mission the asset ever failed before Steve became his mission, a mission he really shouldn’t have failed, his reasons for failing have nothing to do with the man now before him. Nevertheless, he is someone that James, as the Winter Soldier, was once ordered to kill, and even though Natasha seems to have forgiven him immediately, he does not think this man will, because what was done to this man was so much more extensive.

            The man stops, he holds up his hands in a calming, non-threatening gesture, his smile doesn’t change, and there’s something in his eyes, a kind of softening that makes James feel simultaneously comforted and ashamed—it’s as though this man _understands,_ and he definitely doesn’t deserve that. “Steve’s told me all about you. I’m Clint Barton.”

            James can’t even manage to choke out the word _hi,_ he just makes what he hopes is a smile but what he suspects is actually closer to a grimace of fear and discomfort, and Barton, thank heavens, doesn’t push it. He takes the cover off of the dish and Banner jumps in before anyone else can say anything. “Smells good. What is it?”

            It _does_ smell good, it’s the most mouthwatering thing James has smelled in he doesn’t even know how long, and he actually finds himself hoping that there’s enough to go around because he knows damned well that, whatever Steve might say, he’ll go without if it means the others get fed. Barton rubs the back of his neck, looking a little embarrassed. “It’s just macaroni and cheese. With mushrooms. Hope nobody’s allergic.”

            James _almost_ says something, he almost makes a lighthearted quip about food allergies being about the only thing Steve _didn’t_ have, but he bites his tongue before he can even open his mouth. He’s not sure where things stand, how much these people know about Steve’s past medical history, how much teasing he can get away with or even if he and Steve are at a point where they _can_ tease each other, so he stays silent and continues to lurk uncertainly in the background as Natasha sets the table and everyone sits down. It takes a second before Steve notices that James isn’t sitting down, but then he glances over his shoulder and raises an eyebrow and pulls back the empty chair next to him, slightly but pointedly, and James takes the hint and sits down.

            Barton nudges the casserole dish in front of Foster before sitting down, and Foster gives herself a generous helping before passing the dish to Natasha, and James has a slight moment of panic when he realizes that the way the dish is being passed around it will get to him before everyone else has been served, Barton and Thor are on the other side, and he wonders if he can pass it to them without being noticed, but when Steve ladles out a helping and passes the dish to him, he finds that there is more than enough. The meal is absolutely delicious, James can’t remember the last time he tasted anything so good, he’s been mostly living off of dumpster scraps since he’s been on the run and he’s pretty sure that HYDRA just gave him some sort of injection that adequately filled his nutritional needs, the last time he ate actual cooked food was before he fell from the train.

            He stays silent, thankful that nobody tries to talk to him, and listens to the others chatter at one another. It doesn’t take him long to grasp that Steve and Wilson have not seen Natasha, Stark, Barton, or Fitz for several weeks, that Steve has not seen Thor or Banner in a couple of years, that Wilson has never met them before, and that neither of them have met Foster before. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Steve has formed some sort of connection with them, maybe not as close as the Howling Commandos were, but almost that close, and James wonders how long they’ve all known each other but he’s afraid to ask, afraid to find out that these people have known Steve longer than he has, because there’s almost seventy years of Steve’s life that he’s missed out on.

            “What’ve you been up to the last couple of years, Cap?” Banner asks casually, and James almost has a heart attack, wondering if Banner is a mind-reader of some kind. “I don’t mean recently, Romanoff’s told us about what you’ve been up to since HYDRA came out of the woodwork, but before that.”

            James manages not to react with confusion to the implication that HYDRA has been in hiding as Steve shrugs. “Routine work with S.H.I.E.L.D. Rescue missions, recon missions, that sort of thing. What about you?”

            “Went back to a little village a few kilometers from New Delhi. Served as their doctor. It…worked, for a while.” Banner smiles slightly, his expression a little rueful. “But HYDRA—at least, I think they were HYDRA—turned up, and…they startled the other guy. So…here I am.”

            This is nonsense to James, but Steve seems to understand, he nods and says, “Well, it’s good to see you again, anyway.” Turning to Thor, he adds, “How are things on Asgard?”

            _So he_ is _that Thor,_ James thinks, but he says nothing as Thor carefully sets his glass aside. “Surely you don’t think I would be here on Midg—Earth—if there were things on Asgard which needed to be put to rights?”

            “That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Steve says, with a slight but humorless smile.

            “Ah. Naturally.” Thor hesitates, then looks Steve in the eye and says, “Loki is dead. I offered him parole temporarily in order to assist me in a matter of life and death—it’s rather a long story—but in doing so, he took an attack that was meant for me, and which cost him his life.”

            This time it’s Steve who hesitates, and James, glancing at him sideways, sees something in his friend’s face that he isn’t prepared for—a warring between the urge to say the right thing and a kind of shadow, a darkness behind Steve’s blue eyes, something that almost seems to project the word _Good_ into the conversation. In the end, he just swallows and nods and cuts his gaze away from Thor.

            “Wait. Loki’s your brother, right?” Wilson asks, frowning slightly as he points his fork at Thor. “The guy who destroyed half of Manhattan two years ago?”

            “Indeed, Son of Will,” Thor replies.

            “Wilson,” Wilson corrects him. “Or Sam. My dad’s name was Langston. Names don’t work like that anymore—not in America, anyway.”

            “Not in most places,” Banner says.

             “I understand,” Thor says with a nod. “My apologies—and I thank you for explaining to me. I thought I had learned a good deal in the last few months, but—”

            “Hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Stark says with a grin.

            James keeps quiet and continues eating and pretends he understands what’s going on and seriously hopes that nobody addresses any questions to him, because he really doesn’t want to talk right now. Steve seems to have brought himself under control, he looks up at Thor and says, “I’m sorry about your brother.”

            “He died a warrior’s death,” Thor replies. “Like our mother.” James looks up, feeling a pang, but though Thor has a distant look in his eyes, he does not seem as though he is about to cry. Suddenly a slight smile tugs at his lips. “He does—did—an excellent impression of you, friend Rogers.”

            Foster snorts, putting a hand over her mouth, and Steve looks startled. “I’m sorry, what?”

            Thor’s eyes dance with amusement as he focuses on Steve once more. “Our mother taught him shapeshifting and the art of disguise. While I was bringing him up from the cells, he shifted into the forms of several other warriors of Asgard, then suggested that perhaps I should be more comfortable in the company of one of my new companions.” He gestures around the table. “He chose your form, if only for a few moments, and while he was less than pleased with the fit of your costume, he praised the confidence and righteousness he felt in it, then asked if I wished to ‘have a rousing discussion about truth, honor, patriotism? God bless America.’”

            Natasha, Stark, Foster, and Wilson nearly fall from their seats with laughter, Fitz covers his mouth with his hand, even Banner snickers, and Steve blushes a brilliant scarlet and mumbles, “I don’t _really_ sound like that, do I?”

            “Of course not,” Barton assures him. “Mockery is— _was_ —one of Loki’s gifts.”

            “It was not, perhaps, so amusing at the time,” Thor admits. “And I did slam him into a wall for it.” He pauses, then adds, “I should, perhaps, point out that immediately prior to that, he changed my form so that I resembled the Lady Sif.”

            Even Steve and Barton join in the laughter this time, Thor chuckles as well, and James stares down into the last third of his plate so that it won’t be obvious that he’s not laughing, mostly because he has no idea who the Lady Sif is or what’s so funny. And then, very suddenly, he’s not sitting in a kitchen in New York anymore, he’s sitting at the table at the base camp, lit by the light of a single lantern, the room wreathed in smoke, everyone but him and Steve with a cigarette between his lips, the remains of a meal off to one side, laughing as they play a game of cards, celebrating having come through another day alive, none of them dreaming what the next day would bring—the last night they were all together, the night before he fell from the train.

            He sets his fork down a little more sharply than he intends to and clenches his metal hand into a fist under the table, desperately trying to stave off the flood of pain that accompanies the memory, one of his last memories of _before_ , trying not to fall apart at the table. Steve notices, he stops laughing immediately and says in a voice of genuine worry, “Buck?”

            The others stop laughing, too, James is aware of their eyes on him and he fights against the surge of panic as he mumbles, “Sorry, just…guess I’m tired.” It’s a lie and not a lie all at once, he _is_ tired, he’s absolutely exhausted, but he’s still kind of afraid to sleep, not knowing what faces will haunt him tonight, and anyway that isn’t why he’s acting the way he is, and Steve probably knows it, too.

            Stark gets to his feet immediately and says, “Should’ve thought about that before I dragged you up here to eat, sorry. Come on, I’ve got your rooms all set up for you.”

            James is startled, and a little afraid, and he has to remind himself that Stark knew he was coming, that he’s been preparing for James and the others, so of _course_ there’s something set up for him, and that it’s not likely to be a torture chamber. He still can’t quite look at anyone else, can’t keep from hugging himself as he pushes away from the table and mumbles something under his breath and turns quickly to follow Stark. Behind him he hears the soft _clink_ of a fork and the scrape of a chair and a quiet voice that he can’t quite catch the words to, and he fights back the fear again, and when they’re in the elevator, he immediately presses his back against the wall as Stark presses a button.

            “I gave you a wing to yourself,” Stark explains as the elevator begins to rise. “Seventy-second floor, you’ve got a bedroom, a walk-in closet, and a full bath, plus a spare room that can be used for whatever—a sitting room, an office, you name it. And it’s all the way at one end, right next to the stairwell, which, you know, most of us probably won’t use, but you’re in a hell of a lot better shape than I am, so maybe you will. Anyway, nobody else is down that way, so you don’t have to worry about anything like that. I took a guess at your size—figured you’d be about the same size as Steve is, and I guess I wasn’t far wrong, not that I ever am—so the dressers have some shirts and pants and stuff in them. I didn’t think you’d come with a lot of baggage—didn’t figure HYDRA’s first priority for you was a wardrobe. And here we are,” he adds as the doors slide open, and he strides out.

            James follows him, a little bewildered, wondering if Stark ever stops talking or if the chatter was in order to distract him and keep him from panicking in the elevator, which surprises him. Stark leads him to a door and holds it open and says, “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” With a cheeky grin, he closes the door behind James and leaves him alone.

            The room surprises him. It is large, bigger than any room James has ever had in his life, certainly he’s never had one so big to _himself_ before, his room when he still lived at home was scarcely big enough for his bed and a dresser with all his clothes in it, and when he got the apartment he and Steve had shared the single bedroom, which had _still_ been smaller than this one. The bed is large, too, big enough to fit three or four people, and covered with soft, clean, comfortable-looking sheets. All of the furniture matches and everything is neat and trim and new and James is almost sure that Stark took him to the wrong room, no way can this be meant for someone like James.

            Still, he decides to accept it, if only for the night, he really _is_ tired, it’s as though someone suddenly pulls the plug and all his energy goes circling down some sort of cosmic drain. He opens a drawer at random and finds a pair of pants that look like they belong with pajamas, and he strips out of the sooty, stained clothes he’s been wearing more or less since he went on the run and pulls on the pajama pants and crawls under the covers.

            He falls asleep almost at once, which doesn’t really surprise him, because when he crashes he crashes _hard,_ but he also has a restless night full of bad dreams and silent terrors, and that doesn’t really surprise him, either. After everything he’s done, why should he deserve a good night’s sleep?

* * *

            The first thing James does when he wakes up is to go into the bathroom. He uses the toilet, washes his hands, and splashes his face with water, then stares in the mirror.

            The face staring back at him is haggard, with dark circles under the eyes, framed by long, stringy brown hair and marred with dark stubble. It looks…dirty, somehow. Frowning, he stoops down to the basin and scrubs his face with the bar of soap, washes thoroughly, and dries it on the towel, then looks back at the mirror.

            The face is still dirty. He knows it can’t be, he knows he has not left any molecule of soot or soil, but still he looks dirty, still he looks like the Winter Soldier instead of Bucky Barnes, or even Sergeant Barnes. He needs to do something about this.

            He looks down at the counter next to the sink. There is a cup opposite the soap dispenser, holding a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a file…and something else, something small and silver and shiny. A safety razor.

            James picks it up, studies it. At once he is four years old, holding his father’s hand as they pass a shop window, staring at the shaving kit on display for Christmas, his father giving a soft snort.

            _Safety razors indeed. Anyone who can’t shave with a good old-fashioned straight-blade razor isn’t worthy of calling himself a man. It was good enough for my father and my grandfather, son, it’s good enough for me, and it’ll be good enough for you one day, too._

            His father, John Alexander Barnes, who had gotten killed trying to stop a fight just a few days after his only son’s twenty-third birthday. James had been on his own then, he’d been living in an apartment with Steve, Steve who’d just lost his mother, but he rushed over immediately when his mother had called sobbing, they both did, and when his mother died three weeks later of a broken heart, Steve sat next to him on the sofa not saying anything, just with his arm around James’ shoulders, just being there, and the next day they went together to the barbershop and got a shave and a haircut with the straight razor sharpened on the leather strop, their last tribute to a man who had been good to both of them, better than James deserved sometimes.

            James looks around for the lather mug and brush, doesn’t find one, and decides not to worry about it too much. He splashes warm water on his face again, then picks up the safety razor, tilts his head upwards, and carefully rakes the blade over his face.

            He goes slowly, carefully, negotiating the corners of his mouth and the line of his jaw. He stops to rinse the head of the razor every so often, he stoically ignores the burn of the blade rasping against his skin, and once or twice he stops and looks again for the lather mug, but still doesn’t find it.

            At last, he sets the razor aside, bends over, and splashes his face with water again, then pats it dry with the towel and looks in the mirror again.

            His face is clean. More—it seems younger somehow. Tentatively, James runs his fingers, his _real_ fingers, over the slightly pink skin. It’s soft to the touch, not rough and prickly like he’s been used to. More out of curiosity than anything, he gathers his hair into his metal hand and pulls it back.

            James Buchanan Barnes stares back at him.

            Letting his hair go, he looks thoughtfully at the mirror. He lifts his chin, tilts his head, raises his eyebrows a touch. There’s something a little familiar about the posture, but he doesn’t quite know why. He still doesn’t know who the face belongs to, not really. It doesn’t seem like his.

            Still, it’s enough for right now.

            James returns to the main bedroom and hesitates, glancing at the stained and tattered clothing he has worn since he stole it from a Goodwill dropoff, the day after dragging Steve from the river. It smells of fire and grime, of sewage and sweat, of blood and death and despair, and there is a neat, inviting laundry chute tucked in one corner and a dresser with clothing in it.

            He picks up the soiled clothing and drops it down the chute, only afterwards realizing that it is a stupid move, that he should have checked whether or not the clothes in the drawer will even _fit_ him first, but it is too late now, so he swallows and makes his way over to the dresser. And he is surprised, because the shirts inside it are the sorts of shirts he wore every day as a young man, before the war, slightly larger than he remembers, but essentially the same. He pulls one out and stares at it, wondering if it _is_ one of his old shirts, because it looks identical to his absolute favorite, but no, he realizes, it is merely similar, because _his_ shirt had a tear on the side that had been neatly mended—mended so that you couldn’t see on the outside that it had ever been torn, but still mended, and when he turns the shirt inside out, just out of curiosity, he does not find the small ridge where the neat, tight stitches should be.

            He shrugs into it anyway, fumbles with the button, the metal fingers annoying him, and ordinarily he would leave the cuffs unbuttoned and push the sleeves up to the elbow, in fact starts to do so, but he stops and stares at the ridges and joints of his metal arm for a long moment and then slowly tugs the sleeves back down and buttons the cuffs. He pulls on a pair of trousers and fastens them, then steps into the shoes he’s been wearing, pockets the card Stark made for him—although he is not quite sure why, the man impressed that it is important—and cautiously opens the door.

            The hallway is deserted, but that doesn’t ease James’s nerves; if anything, it makes things worse, he has no idea where anyone is or if anyone might jump out at him from behind a door or a quiet shadow. He closes the door carefully behind him and moves down the hall. There is a window set at the end, just big enough to let in the light during the day, but it is dark at the moment, and he wonders how long he slept, or if he slept really at all, whether it is so early in the morning that the sun has not yet risen or if he’s slept clear through to the following evening. There’s a faint pinkish glow in the sky beyond, however, and he knows it’s either the cusp of sunrise or the tail end of sunset, so he squints at the horizon for a minute and then decides that the window faces east, ergo, the sun is rising.

            The doorway immediately to the left of the window draws his attention; unlike the other doors on the hallway, it does not have a handle or a knob, merely a black rectangle with a slot in it. He puzzles over it for a minute, then remembers his card, pulls it out, stares at the chevrons for a moment, then points them down the hallway and slides the card into the slot, where it fits perfectly. A faint red light turns green, there is a _click_ noise, and the door opens inward without a further sound, revealing a faintly-lit stairwell. The opening door does not startle or alarm him, rather it excites him, renews a spark he has believed long dead, the delight in scientific progress that once drove him to get top grades in school and that once had him entertaining hopes of attending a university. Despite the terrible things that science has done to him, he still finds it in himself to be thrilled with technology, as long as it is not directly applied to a human being, and this is probably a simple little thing, but it’s still innovative to him, and he appreciates it.

            He begins climbing the stairwell, not really with any particular aim in mind, just seeing how high it goes. It does not take him long to notice a pattern; he will climb a short flight, find a window, climb the next flight, find a door, climb the next flight and another window, and he glances out each window as he passes it, the glow not really increasing, making him wonder if he misunderstood it, if it’s just the lights of the city, but the quality is wrong for that, it looks too organic. He passes a door and pauses when the pattern is broken—at the top of the next flight of steps, there is no window whatsoever. Curious as to the sudden break in routine, he turns to the door, is once again confronted by the flat black box and the slot, he inserts his card and sees the light turn green and steps back as the door swings open and then steps out into the room.

            And freezes.

            The room is enormous, probably taking up the entire floor, and except for two other panels that look as though they conceal elevators, the entirety of the outer walls are floor-to-ceiling glass, as clear as though there is nothing there at all, and there is a rail set about halfway up, just the right height to lean against and survey the city. It is obviously an observation room.

            For a long moment, James stands still, his back to the door that has swung discreetly shut behind him, staring around at the room and feeling exposed. And then his attention is drawn by a spot on the horizon, the sprawl of the city, and without conscious thought he allows himself to drift over to the window and look.

            The sun is definitely beginning to rise now, although it is not yet visible beyond the buildings, he can see lights in buildings beginning to switch on or off and the headlights of cars without number wending their way through the streets. This is a city that never sleeps, or maybe just one that gets up really early, because the lights go in both directions and he wonders how many are going to work, how many are coming home, how many are visiting relatives and friends and how many are just driving aimlessly, how many have only the purest motives and how many have only the vilest and where he fits in the whole mix.

            James is at once comforted and bewildered by the sight of the horizon, it is a horizon he has seen before, though not from this angle, and from what Steve said yesterday, he can understand why, he never lived in this part of the city, but it’s still the same city, the city that gave him life and nurtured him for the first twenty-six years of his life, give or take a couple of months. Still, the odd perspective throws him a little off-balance, and besides that, so many of the buildings are higher than he remembers them ever being.

            “Morning.”

            At the voice behind him, James about jumps out of his skin, he whirls around and half drops into a defensive crouch before his brain registers what his eyes are seeing, and even then he doesn’t exactly relax at the sight of Barton, wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, a pale bathrobe hanging open over his shoulders, holding a cup in each hand and regarding him with a mild expression. It has to be admitted that he doesn’t _look_ particularly threatening, but James can’t get the memory of the last time he saw Barton out of his head, and although Barton was not in fact any real threat at that time, the memory refuses to budge.

            Barton advances slowly, holding one of the cups out to James with a slight lift of his eyebrows. “Coffee?”

            James slowly rises from his crouch, suspicious and just a little afraid. “How did you know I was up here?” he asks, his voice feeling rusty and hoarse.

            “J.A.R.V.I.S.”

            James feels a momentary surge of panic, he vividly remembers the names of each person he met the night before, and he is absolutely positive that none of them are named Jarvis, so he asks in a voice that shakes a little, “Who’s that?”

            “Tony’s A.I.,” Barton replies, and then he must see something in James’s face, some clue that James has no idea what those letters stand for, because he adds, “Artificial Intelligence. J.A.R.V.I.S. runs the tower, the house in Malibu, most of the cars, and backup support for the Iron Man suits. I got up a little earlier than usual this morning, and when I was making coffee I asked J.A.R.V.I.S. if anyone else was up. He mentioned you’d come out of the stairwell here, so I thought I’d bring you a cup of coffee.” He holds out the cup again.

            This time James takes it, hesitantly, wrapping it in both of his hands and feeling the warmth soak into the palm of his right hand, and he winces internally because he still can’t get used to not feeling things with his left hand, it’s never been something he thought about but in the last ten weeks he’s thought about it almost constantly. He closes his eyes and inhales the scent of the coffee, takes a sip, lets the flavor roll over his tongue, and it is better than any coffee he has ever had before, he thinks it must be a much more expensive blend, a more exotic blend, than he ever had before, but more importantly, he doesn’t taste any bitterness, any metallic taste, no hint of poison or drugs in the brew.

            “Hope it’s okay that it’s black. Didn’t know how you took it.”

            “I never put anything in my coffee,” James says, his eyes opening and the words coming automatically, without conscious thought. “I didn’t really drink coffee before the war—it made Steve too jittery, so we stuck to tea, mostly. But coffee came in our ration packs while I was overseas, and I started drinking it partly because it was something hot on a cold night, and partly because it kept me going, it took the edge off my nerves.”

            Barton drifts over to the railing next to him, cradling his own cup of coffee, and says, “I thought most soldiers smoked—I mean, I thought that’s what cigarettes were for, for taking the edge off of nerves. Didn’t you?”

            “God, no, I couldn’t,” James says, feeling a twinge of horror at the thought. “Steve’s asthma—if I’d started smoking and brought that home, I could’ve killed him. I wasn’t gonna risk that, not for anything. I’d take all the stress in the universe first.”

            Barton smiles slightly, leaning on the railing, and asks, “What about the other Commandos?”

            “Yeah, they all smoked—all of us except me and Steve.” James recalls the memory that surfaced at dinner the night before, then remembers even further back. “Morita—Jim Morita—we had a working arrangement, even before we were captured. I’d give him the cigarettes out of my ration packs and he’d give me his coffee, he hated the taste of it.”

            “You fought in the same regiment? I thought all the Japanese-American soldiers fought in segregated units.”

            “Most of ‘em did—we heard a lot about the 100th and the 442nd—but not quite all,” James says, remembering the quiet, scared kid he took under his wing, not exactly a substitute for Steve, but helping him took the edge off missing his best friend. “And most of the guys in our unit wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Called him a dirty Jap and all that. But my old man—he fought in the First World War—he told me once that everybody’s the same color in the trenches. Morita was a good guy. Wasn’t anyone else in the unit I’d rather have at my back in a fight.”

            “Guess Steve felt the same,” Barton says. “Since he asked Morita to be a Commando. Or was that you?”

            James pauses, he tries to think back, he racks his brain desperately, but the memory remains stubbornly, tantalizingly out of reach, it will not come to him, he can’t say honestly who he recommended for the Howling Commandos and who Steve recruited. His hand tightens unconsciously around the cup, he feels himself start to tremble, and he can’t stop himself, can’t quell the rising panic at the fact that he _doesn’t remember._ “I—I don’t—I can’t—“

            “Whoa, hey, it’s okay,” Barton says, his voice gentle, he reaches out and touches James’s shoulder lightly, but James flinches away from the touch and he draws his hand back, and then he says the last thing James would ever have expected to hear him say. “You don’t have to remember. It’s okay.”

            James looks up in surprise at Barton and stammers, “I—I don’t?”

            “No,” Barton says, and there it is again, that same understanding, the understanding James doesn’t deserve, he’s a _monster,_ does nobody get that? “You don’t. It’s okay if you can’t remember. They were brainwashing you, right? How long’s it been since they stopped?”

            “Seventy-seven days,” James replies with the prompt recall of someone who has thought of very little else in that time, and he shivers slightly and hunches over his coffee cup as if to ward off the memory of the cryo-freeze chamber that he knows will probably haunt him for the rest of his life, however long that may be.

            “And as long as they’ve been keeping your mind blank, I’d be really surprised if you _could_ remember everything by now. The memories’ll come back. Give ‘em time. Don’t try to force ‘em. It’s still in there somewhere.”

            “I wish I could believe that,” James mumbles before he can stop himself, he’s starting to fear that some of the memories are gone for good and he just prays he hasn’t lost too many of his memories of Steve, that he hasn’t forgotten something important.

            “Trust me.” Barton’s voice has an element of sadness that startles James, and he looks up from his coffee mug again to see the other man staring across the skyline of the city with a slightly haunted expression in his eyes that James knows only too well. He, too, turns his gaze onto the horizon, and for a while there is silence as the two of them watch the sun inch higher and higher. Finally, Barton speaks again, making an attempt to be casual. “Sleep okay?”

            James can’t help the bitter huff of laughter that escapes his lips. “No.”

            “Nightmares?”

            James hesitates before admitting, “Yeah. Faces. Memories of…all my past missions…”

            Barton is silent for a moment. At last, he says, “You know you didn’t…it wasn’t your fault, right? HYDRA had you brainwashed, made you into a weapon. You didn’t choose to kill any of those people.”

            “But I still killed them,” James says bitterly, hunching his shoulders.

            “I could say that _you_ didn’t do that—the Winter Soldier did—that HYDRA had hollowed you out and stripped you of yourself, and that what was left was an empty shell,” Barton says slowly. Before James can so much as open his mouth, however, Barton continues, “But we both know that’s not true. They took away your memories, they took away your identity—but you were still _you,_ if you got down to the fundamentals. Maybe you didn’t know what you were doing, maybe you couldn’t help it—but it was still _you_ who was doing those things, essentially. Right?”

            James looks up in surprise—and, it must be confessed, in slight relief, he wouldn’t have been able to articulate any of that and has assumed that nobody would believe him if he tried. “How—how did you know?”

            “An outside observer could have extrapolated that from the fact that you saved Steve’s life, that you dragged him out of the Potomac even though you’d just gotten finished telling him you didn’t know who he was,” Barton says. “Protecting Steve is so deeply ingrained in your personality that it transcended HYDRA’s programming. But…truthfully, I know because I’ve been there.”

            “You were…brainwashed?” James asks, a little uncertainly.

            “For three days,” Barton replies quietly, looking up at James, and his eyes are haunted. “I know that doesn’t really compare to seventy years, but…it was enough. Loki—Thor’s brother, the guy we were talking about at dinner last night—he had a staff, and…it’s kind of a long story, but basically he used magic to take over my brain. He didn’t take away my training, my personality, anything like that—but he suppressed my memories. I didn’t remember anything but what he wanted me to remember, and everything else…well, it took a while to come back.” He swallows hard. “Nat had to knock me upside the head to break his hold on me, and I had to help fight to save Manhattan almost as soon as I came around. And when the battle was over and Thor had taken Loki back to Asgard, _that’s_ when I found out that the love of my life had been killed.” His voice shakes a little on the last word.

            James’s chest constricts with pity and horror. “Did you—” he begins, then snaps off the question, ashamed of himself for probing at that wound.

            But Barton shakes his head. “No—Loki did. Ran him through from behind with the same spear he was using to control and brainwash me. They told me he was dead—well, he _was_ dead—but S.H.I.E.L.D. found a way to bring him back. I only found out he was alive a couple months ago, though. ‘Round the same time Steve found out you were alive, actually.”

            There’s a lot of information in this statement, a lot of things that James doesn’t understand and a couple of things he hopes he _does_ understand properly, and he isn’t sure what to say in reply. Finally, he latches onto a single word. “He?”

            “Phil Coulson.” For a moment, the tired, haunted look leaves Barton’s face, and it lights up with a softness, a tenderness, that almost brings a smile to James’s lips as well. “My lover for almost twenty years. As of nine weeks ago, my fiancé.”

            James feels his breath catch in his throat, hardly daring believe that what he’s just heard is true, hardly willing to allow himself to realize that it means what he thinks it means. “You—you can _do_ that?”

            “The world’s changed some in the last seventy years,” Barton says, his gaze drifting back to the city skyline. “Not a lot. But some.”

            James studies Barton, trying to see some sort of hint, some indication that Barton is a queer, and he sees none, sees no similarity between Barton and the sorts of men who used to haunt the illicit clubs and back alleys that catered to that kind, and he blurts out, “You don’t look like a three-letter man.”

            “A what?” Barton frowns slightly, drawing his chin back.

            James remembers that Barton is younger than he is—theoretically—and that he’s probably more familiar with the new slang term rather than the old, although it’s one he himself tends to shy away from using. “Uh—you know, a fag.”

            “Oh.” Barton’s eyes don’t so much as flicker as he gently corrects James. “We don’t use that word anymore—it’s considered a slur.”

            “Sorry,” James says, blushing and looking down into his coffee cup. He decides not to mention that he’s pretty sure it wasn’t exactly polite back then, either—not that that sort of thing got discussed in polite society _anyway._

            “No harm done. You didn’t know. Now you do.” Barton shrugs without looking up. “If you use it again, I’ll probably be offended, but I can forgive an honest mistake once. But yeah, I’m gay.”

            “You don’t look that, either,” James says honestly. The man seems altogether too serious, almost sad.

            Barton chuckles softly, and this time he _does_ turn away from the window to look at James. “I keep forgetting how much language has changed since your time. ‘Gay’ doesn’t really mean ‘happy’ anymore—it’s the more modern slang term for ‘homosexual.’”

            James flinches slightly at the stark word, but just says quietly, “Oh.”

            “Like I said, the world’s changed some,” Barton says. “Being gay…or bi…it’s a little more accepted now. Not everywhere. Not even everywhere in America. There are still states where same-sex marriage is illegal, states where you can be fired for being homosexual. It just so happens that New York isn’t one of them.”

            James wants to get back to safer ground now, or at least less dangerous, and somehow the idea of talking about brainwashing seems less dangerous than talking about sexual preference, so he blurts out, “Did—did you remember that? When you were brainwashed? Did he let you remember…?”

            Barton’s smile disappears instantly, and he shakes his head. “No. I didn’t remember his name…didn’t remember that I loved him…didn’t remember anything. I can’t say what would have happened if I’d seen him, but—I didn’t. And that was one of the last memories to come back afterwards, which upset me. A lot. It was the most important memory I had— _he’s_ the most important thing in the world to me—and he was just…gone.”

            “Like a hole in your memories,” James says softly. “You know someone belongs there, but you can’t think who…it’s like a phantom pain.”

            “Exactly. And in my case, I think it was made worse because when the memory _did_ come back, Steve told me he was dead.”

            “ _Steve_ told you?” James says, looking up, torn between desire to hear more about his best friend and surprise that Steve would be so insensitive.

            “He didn’t know,” Barton says quickly, holding up his free hand. “I mean…he didn’t know Phil and I were together. The only one who knew that was Natasha. But…we’d gone out for shawarma after the battle, and I said something about how I’d forgotten to pick any up for Phil, and Steve just gave me this look…I asked him what was going on, and he told me. Kinda fell apart after that.”

            “I don’t blame you,” James says. He tries to imagine what he would have done if Steve had been the one to fall from the train instead, then instantly terminates that line of thought as being too terrifying to contemplate. He’s almost certain he wouldn’t have survived it.

            Barton looks back out at the city again. “I didn’t think I was going to survive,” he says softly, and James starts nervously, wondering if Barton is reading his mind. “For about the first year and a half afterwards, the only two things I really felt were grief—at losing Phil—and anger—at Nat for not telling me, and I only felt that sometimes, really. Everything else was…muffled, I guess. Or drowned, or pickled, or whatever. I don’t think I had a sober minute before Tony rescued me back in November.”

            James wonders, for the briefest of moments, if Steve—but no. Steve isn’t that type, he’s the type to bow his head and put his shoulder to the grindstone and try to work through his pain, he wouldn’t have tried to drink his pain away, even if he was as devastated as James would have been…which he wouldn’t have been. James isn’t delusional enough to believe _that._ They’re friends, nothing more, and he knows that’s the way it has to be, whatever the world may be like now.

            “Did it help?” he asks, dragging himself back from, if not his own private hell, at least his own private purgatory. “I mean—the drinking. Did it make it easier to lose him?”

            Barton exhales deeply, and suddenly he looks old and tired and fragile in a way that makes James ashamed for having asked. “No,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “It just…put the feelings off for a little while. Once I sobered up, I still had to deal with it. And it was all the worse for having delayed so long.”

            James instinctively starts to reach over and put his hand over Barton’s, then checks himself. In the first place, they barely know each other, and in the second place, he’s not sure Barton would want his comfort if he knew more about what James is like. He’s almost sure that most of Barton’s knowledge comes from Steve, and Steve seems inclined to think the best of James even though he doesn’t really have a “best” to think of. Instead, he says, a little awkwardly, “I’m sorry, I—I shouldn’t have…”

            Barton lets out a soft huff of laughter and looks up at James with a slight smile—a genuine one—playing about his lips. “You know what? You’re actually the first person who’s ever really asked me that. Steve’s got too much tact, Tony I think didn’t want to open _his_ old wounds, Thor and Banner don’t even know I had a drinking problem, and Nat…she doesn’t really dwell on the past.”

            “Yeah,” James says dryly. “I noticed.”

            “I thought you might,” Barton says. He regards James seriously for a moment, then says quietly, “Last night…when you said you’d met her before…it wasn’t just because she’d been in the way of a couple of your missions, was it? You called her ‘Natalia’…”

            James hesitates, he remembers all too well how he met her, but he isn’t sure how much of it he really wants to talk about right now; at the same time, he suspects that Barton and Natasha are good friends and that Barton deserves to know, if he doesn’t already. In an equally quiet voice, he says, “Has—have you ever heard of the Red Room?”

            To his relief, Barton nods. “Yeah, that was—” he begins, then stops, his eyes widening in horror. “You were there for that?”

            “They put me in charge of training them,” James replies, his hand unconsciously tightening around his coffee cup, his muscles tensing for flight if necessary. “Just for a couple of days. But…I started to remember, and…I tried to save them. It—it didn’t work.”

            “God,” Barton whispers. “I had no idea…” He shakes his head and says, “You’re lucky to be alive. There were—what, half a dozen or so?”

            “Thirteen,” James says.

            “Then you’re _really_ lucky to be alive. I can’t imagine the KGB being too forgiving about potentially losing that many assets.”

            James shudders at the word _assets_ and has to close his eyes tightly, fighting back the memories of the cold voices that discussed him as though he wasn’t in the room, or was something that couldn’t understand them, like a piece of marginally useful furniture. _I think it is time we deployed the asset. The asset is performing satisfactorily. Let the asset handle that._ They never referred to him as _him,_ not unless it was to issue the seven-word command he knows and dreads yet: _Prep him, wipe him, and start over._

            “Shit.” Barton’s voice seems to be coming from a long way, muffled through sacking. “I didn’t think—dammit, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

            James struggles with himself, but he’s losing, he can feel himself slipping, can feel himself about to fall apart. Suddenly and without warning, he feels a gentle pressure at the small of his back, and he flinches instinctively, but it doesn’t go away, it just stays there, supporting and comforting at the same time. Barton speaks again in a voice as gentle as his touch. “I’ve got you. You’re right here. You’re safe. They can’t get at you, not here. You’re safe. C’mon, I gotcha.”

            The repetitive litany and the strong but gentle touch grounds him, draws him back from the brink. He begins, slowly, to relax. At last, he opens his eyes and looks gratefully up at Barton. “Thank you,” he says hoarsely.

            Barton simply nods, giving James a slow, searching look. “You okay?”

            “No,” James answers honestly. “But…I’m better.”

            “That’s more or less what I meant.” Barton withdraws his hand and hunches over the railing again. “I’ve been tortured before, so I know what it’s like. I can’t imagine what seventy years of it would be like.”

            “I wasn’t…exactly awake for all seventy years,” James says, staring into his coffee. “That’s gonna be the hardest part to get used to…”

            “What is?”

            James hesitates for a moment, it has nothing to do with anything they’ve been talking about exactly, but he feels like Barton will understand. “It’s just…I was always a year older than Steve was, so I always felt…kinda protective of him. Like a big brother, you know?” _Except that no big brother should have the feelings for him that you do,_ his mind prompts him treacherously, but he fights the feeling down and continues, “But now…you know, I’ve spent so much time in cryo-freeze that I haven’t—I haven’t aged like I should’ve. If you’re only counting the time I’ve been out of that as time I’ve actually aged…” He trails off, biting his lower lip.

            Barton studies him. “How long has it been, do you think?”

            “About two years,” James replies, which makes him thirty, or a little over thirty, but he doesn’t add that.

            “Then you’re in luck,” Barton says with a slight smile. “Steve’s only been thawed himself for around two years.”

            “What?” James says sharply, feeling the color bleed from his face as terror knots his stomach. “He was—they were—”

            “No, no, no,” Barton says quickly, shaking his head. “Nothing like that. But…” He takes a deep breath. “Sometime after you fell off the train…and keep in mind, I’m only forty-three, I wasn’t there, this is all stuff I’ve learned later…but not too long after that, Steve found out that Schmidt was taking the _Valkyrie_ to New York to blow it up. He went to stop him…he ended up beating him, but the only way to keep the plane away from the city was for him to take it down himself. He crashed into the Arctic Ocean, and…well, it took almost seventy years to find him. They’d only thawed him out two weeks before the Battle of Manhattan, and like I said, that was two years ago. So it works out—you’ve both lived two years out of the last sixty-nine. You’re still the same distance apart.”

            “That probably shouldn’t be comforting,” James says slowly, “and yet…” He manages a small smile. “Thanks.”

            “No problem.” Barton smiles slightly in response. “One less thing for you to stress yourself over.”

            “As if the ones I have left are such piddling little things.”

            “Can I help with them?”

            James hesitates. “Probably not.”

            Barton obviously isn’t that easy to put off. “Want to give it a shot?”

            James opens his mouth, intending to ask Barton how to get it through to Steve that he really isn’t a hero, that he may not be the Winter Soldier but he sure as hell isn’t Bucky either. To his surprise, however, what comes out is something entirely different. “How do you stop loving someone?”

            “You don’t,” Barton says simply. “If it’s not real, it’ll die of its own accord. If it is, it’ll last forever, whatever you do. But you can’t make yourself fall out of love with someone, any more than you can make yourself fall _in_ love with someone.”

            “Even if they’ll never love you back?”

            James asks the question softly, looking down into his coffee cup, it’s probably getting cold but he doesn’t want to take another sip, he’s too afraid of choking on it or having it in his mouth when he needs to speak instead. He didn’t mean to say anything about it, but it seems the question forces itself out against his will. He only hopes that Barton doesn’t know what he’s thinking of— _who_ he’s thinking of.

            Barton hesitates, then takes a deep breath and says, “Have you ever asked?”

            “What? No!” Startled out of his reverie, James looks up and answers without thinking. “God, I couldn’t—I know what the answer would be, and I couldn’t stand it if he looked at me differently afterwards—I’d ruin everything.” He suddenly realizes what he’s said and looks away. The fear is bubbling up again, fear of a more specific kind, fear that _Barton_ will look at him differently, fear that he’ll put the pieces together and say something…

            “Unless you’ve got psychic powers I don’t know about, you _don’t_ know what the answer would be,” Barton points out. “You know what you _think_ the answer would be—but you won’t know the answer until you ask. You might be surprised.”

            “I’ve been frozen for almost seventy years,” James says, panicking slightly, taking refuge in the best kind of denial he can come up with. “It’s not like I can—”

            “Come on, Barnes, let’s be honest, huh?” Barton says gently. “I’m not too up on my grammar and my tenses and all that, but you’re talking about this person like he’s still alive. We both know who it is you love, so let’s just get it out, okay?”

            James can’t look Barton in the eye. He grips the coffee cup tighter, wraps his free arm around his midsection, trying to make himself as small as possible, wishing he could just run away but knowing that’s not an option, knowing that Stark’s sentinel will just tell Barton where he is if he tries. “I—I can’t, I—”

            “Yeah, you can. C’mon, it won’t hurt.”

            “I don’t _deserve_ him!” James bursts out, looking up at Barton with something between anger and despair, something he hasn’t felt since he saw Steve and Peggy Carter looking at one another. “He’s a good person—he’s truth and honor and righteousness personified, he’s brave and strong and sweet and genuine and—and _good_. And I’m—I’m a _monster,_ Barton. I’m darkness and rage and death and destruction. I’m not good enough for him. I never was, and I’m sure as hell not now.” He looks away, his shoulders sagging in defeat. “Not after everything I’ve done.”

            There’s a long silence. James is sure that Barton agrees with him, that he’s going to walk away, but instead he says quietly, “I think everyone feels like that when they love someone. I sure as hell don’t think I’ve ever been good enough for Phil. I’ll admit that maybe you’ve got more reason to feel that way _now_ than I do, but…” He hesitates, then asks, “How long?”

            “Have I loved him?” James closes his eyes briefly, knowing he’s not getting out of this conversation and somehow wanting and not wanting to at the same time. Despite himself, he trusts Barton in a way he can’t remember trusting his own father. “Seems like forever. I don’t remember when I first knew…when I first realized I wanted to be more than just his best friend. But I knew I couldn’t…” He swallows hard and makes himself look up. “I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t put him in that kind of position. And it—it wasn’t safe…”

            “That’s what Steve was telling me,” Barton says absently, then clamps his mouth shut and winces.

            “How would Steve know?” James asks, worry for Steve eclipsing his own self-loathing for a moment, as it always has and probably always will.

            Barton swallows and mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like _shit_ before saying in a voice just this side of calm, “You should really talk to him. I mean it. You don’t have to tell him anything you’re not ready to tell him…just talk to him. I think there are things both of you need to explain to one another.”

            “He hasn’t—he didn’t—” James can’t let this one go, he has to know, has to be sure that something didn’t happen to Steve that he didn’t know about, has to know that he didn’t fail to protect his best friend. “Barton, please, _please._ He didn’t…get hurt, did he?”

            Barton hesitates, then takes a deep breath. “Okay, look, you still really need to talk to him. I don’t want to—we’ve talked, and there are things you need to hear from him, when _he’s_ ready for you to hear them. But…no. He never went to…anyplace like that.”

            James exhales and relaxes. “Thank God. Those places…”

            “Were they as bad as he seemed to think they were?” Barton asks quietly.

            “They were probably worse. That’s—that’s another reason I can’t…” James gestures helplessly. “When I started going…I didn’t want anything like _that_ to touch him. I was…I was _tainted,_ even before I got shipped overseas.”

            “I know the feeling,” Barton says.

            “No, you don’t. You can’t possibly.” James takes a swig of coffee and almost wishes it was roped. “I used to—I never went more’n once or twice a month, when I was working the night shift. Sometimes I’d fool around with a dame after a date, but that never went half as far…God, I’d go to those places and do things that a qu—that a prostitute wouldn’t do, no matter what you paid her—” He breaks off, a powerful memory assailing him, of stumbling out of the alley a few steps behind a swaggering, muscular man, of accidentally bumping into a couple of sharply-dressed men about his own age with their arms around their girlfriends, of one of them pushing him out of the way, of the other spitting the word _fag_ at him as they pass. Of throwing his white t-shirt away in the garbage cans outside the apartment rather than risk Steve asking questions about the stains, of snagging a dirty one out of the laundry basket to allay suspicions, of lying on the couch and pretending to sleep rather than bring the taint of what he’s done into the bedroom and the bed they share, of being ready with easy answers to Steve’s questions in the morning, of laughingly deflecting his friend’s rebuttals, of smiling even though he’s falling apart inside.

            “At least you had a choice.” Barton’s voice is raw and bitter.

            James looks up sharply. “What?”

            “I guarantee you, there is probably not a single thing you did that I didn’t do, too, at one point or another,” Barton says, and now it’s his turn to look into his coffee cup like it holds the secrets of the universe. James notices that his hands are trembling faintly. “But I didn’t—I was forced to. Even if I hadn’t been, I wasn’t legally old enough to consent. I was only fourteen when it happened. And I didn’t have _anyone,_ do you understand? I’m an orphan. My brother and I had been with the circus for six years, but we’d kind of kept to ourselves until he got me apprenticed to one of the two guys who abused me…and when I tried to appeal to Barney for help, I found out that he knew damned well what was going on, that he’d basically sold me to him. I only escaped because they thought I was dead. So if you think you’re the only one who thinks you aren’t good enough for the person you love, you’re wrong. Between Duquesne and Chisholm, and the guys I was with later, when I got older and had a few one-night stands…I didn’t think I was _worth_ loving, and I sure as hell didn’t think I deserved a guy like Phil. He’s…he’s a lot like Steve. The only reason I ever told him I loved him in the first place was because I was completely shit-faced drunk, and he’s spent almost every day since then convincing me that he really does love me and that I really do deserve it, and I’m probably going to hate myself in about an hour for telling you all this, but right now I need you to understand that if Steve loves you, he’ll love you in spite of the darkness and the—the taints in your past.”

            The rant takes James’s breath away, partly because of what Barton is saying and partly because he feels somehow like he doesn’t deserve to hear it, like listening to his father fall apart, Barton is so much older than he is, birth year be damned. He wants to rip the throats out of every man who ever hurt Barton, wants to hurt them almost as much as he wanted to hurt the HYDRA officials in Jersey City, it’s an intensity that surprises him. Tentatively, he reaches over and touches Barton’s arm. Barton doesn’t look up, but he grips James’s hand tightly for a moment, closing his eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths.

            James doesn’t want to disturb him, but he has to ask, a little timidly. “How can I ask him to forgive me for—for what I’ve done? What the Winter Soldier did?”

            Barton squeezes James’s hand lightly, releases it, and looks up again. “Patiently. He’ll probably try to tell you that it’s not _you_ who did those things. And I know HYDRA forced you to do them—you didn’t choose to do them any more than I did when Loki had me possessed or brainwashed or whatever—any more than I chose to do what Duquesne and Chisholm forced me to do—but you weren’t an inanimate object, you weren’t a robot, you were still _you._ And it’s probably going to take Steve a long time to understand that. I’ve been trying to lay a foundation for that, but…he’s stubborn, you know?”

            James can’t help but laugh. “No one knows that better than I do. You know how many times he tried to enlist before Erskine finally got him in through the back door? _Four._ Even the night before I shipped out, when I was trying to have one last night of fun and normalcy with my best friend, he couldn’t let it go.”

            Barton’s lips quirk upwards in an almost unwilling smile. “I hope you realize that we’re going to ask you for every last embarrassing story about Steve you can come up with. He’s the baby brother—like Nat’s the baby sister—and we enjoy teasing the living daylights out of them.”

            “As long as _you_ realize that I’m always gonna stop before it goes too far,” James warns him. “He’s not—I mean, he doesn’t have all the medical problems he had when we were younger, I know that, but that doesn’t mean I won’t fight to the death to protect him.”

            “Duly noted.” Barton takes another deep breath and wipes his eyes. “I guess the only thing stronger than your protectiveness of Steve is—was—your patriotism, huh? If you were willing to enlist anyway.”

            James hesitates. “Swear you won’t tell Steve?”

            Barton bites his lip. “As long as you promise not to tell Phil about Barney. I—kind of never told him that part.”

            “I didn’t enlist.”

            Barton frowns. “Sure you did. Everyone knows that. You guys worked out together and went to the recruitment office, he got rejected and you got accepted.”

            James shakes his head. “That’s what I’m saying—I never told Steve, but I didn’t enlist. I knew from the very beginning, he’d never get accepted. He had so many health problems that some days he couldn’t leave the apartment, let alone do anything physically strenuous. He never made it through a whole workout session before he’d start huffing and puffing and I’d have to pretend _I_ was too tired to keep going to get him to stop. I—I couldn’t leave him, though, I never wanted to leave him, I knew if I didn’t stick around there’d be no one to make sure he didn’t push himself too hard. So I was never going to enlist. And I didn’t.” He takes a deep breath, then admits what he’s never admitted to another soul. “I was drafted.”

            “Seriously?” Barton’s eyes widen in surprise.

            “Seriously,” James says. “And I never told Steve…I hid the notice from him, and the night before I was scheduled to report to the draft board, I suggested we go try to enlist the next day. He jumped right on it. I spent half the night lying awake and trying to think of ways to get out of it, but…you know, I couldn’t cheat the physical, I knew they wouldn’t find me mentally or medically unfit for service, and I knew I couldn’t pull off a C.O. designation—”

            “A what?”

            “Conscientious objector. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t believe in war or fighting or anything like that, because I _did,_ and if I did and Steve ever found out, he’d never forgive me. So I just answered honestly and didn’t volunteer any information they didn’t ask for and hoped…but they accepted me, and Steve was rejected, just like I thought he would be. I just…somehow I never expected him to keep trying.” James stops and rubs his forehead, feeling the beginnings of a headache, and at first he’s not sure why, but he gradually realizes that he’s been pushing too hard, the memories have been coming too fast, and it’s starting to overwhelm him. “I almost didn’t remember all that…”

            “Sorry. I’ll quit asking questions for a while,” Barton says. He lifts his coffee cup to take a sip and—somehow—misses his mouth, slopping the liquid all down his front. His expression, as he looks down at himself, is almost comical in its despair. “Aw, coffee, no.”

            James can’t help it, he starts to laugh and almost drops his own coffee cup in consequence. “Sorry—I shouldn’t laugh, but—”

            Barton laughs, too, a little ruefully. “Nah, you’re fine.” He tosses off the last of the coffee and adds, “I’d better go change…J.A.R.V.I.S., is anyone else up?”

            “Everyone is awake and in the kitchen with the exceptions of Master Bruce, who is still asleep, and Master Samuel, who is in the workout room on the fifty-third floor, sir,” a voice replies from seemingly nowhere. James jumps at the cultured British tones and forces himself not to panic.

            “Thanks.” Barton turns to James. “I’m gonna go get dressed. Meet you down in the kitchen. Sixty-fifth floor.”

            James nods and falls into step with Barton, intent on taking the elevator down to the appropriate floor. “Thanks, Barton.”

            “Call me Clint.” Barton—Clint—smiles a little. “I think you’ve earned it.”

            “Then—” James hesitates, then says, “Call me James.”

            “You got it.” Clint claps James on the shoulder. They descend a little ways in silence before the doors slide open and Clint steps out. Before he’s all the way out, though, he turns and looks seriously at James. “Don’t let anyone push you farther than you’re ready for, okay?”

            James smiles slightly. “I never have.”

            Clint smiles back. “See you in a few.”

            The elevator drops a few more floors and James steps out into the short hallway he remembers from the night before. He hears voices, takes a couple of deep breaths, and follows them, still cradling his mug half-full of rapidly cooling coffee. The mood in the kitchen is a jovial one. Thor stands at the stove, stirring a pot; Fitz in his wheelchair sits at the table next to Foster, who is leaning back, her hands folded over her stomach. Stark perches on a counter, sipping from a bright red coffee mug, Natasha is preparing herself a cup of coffee from the looks of it, and Steve rummages in a cabinet, his back to the door. He turns around, his arms full of bowls, sees James, and smiles. “Hey. Sleep okay?”

            James shrugs noncommittally, not wanting to admit to Steve that he spent a restless night. Stark indicates the mug in his hand. “See you found the coffee pot all right. Did you start it?”

            James looks down at the mug and says, a little uncomfortably, “Uh, n-no. Uh—Clint brought it to me…”

            “Oh. He’s up, then?”

            “No, Stark, he’s started brewing coffee in his sleep,” Natasha says sarcastically, turning around and putting her mug to her lips.

            “It’s Clint,” Stark says, raising an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he did.”

            “Well…true,” Natasha admits. “Although as far as I know, Clint doesn’t sleepwalk. Yet.”

            Unexpectedly, James feels his lips twitch. He glances at Steve, who is setting the table. “You did once. Remember?”

            Steve’s cheeks flush. “Shut up.”

            “No, I wanna hear this,” Stark says with a grin.

            “Me, too,” Natasha puts in.

            James remembers what Clint said about the team wanting embarrassing stories about Steve. “He spent the night at my house a lot when we were kids.  This one time, though, I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the front door opening, and there was Steve, walking right out the front door. I caught up to him and asked him where he was going, and he turned around, pointed vaguely over his shoulder, and said in this tone of voice like I should’ve known better, ‘I’ve gotta go audition for the Rockettes.’”

            Thor looks over his shoulder in confusion, but everyone else starts laughing. Foster puts a hand over her mouth and giggles, “What did you do?”

            “Well, at that point I realized he hadn’t opened his eyes, so I just told him that he’d already auditioned. He stood there for a minute, then asked if he got it,” James says, smiling a little. “I told him the results wouldn’t be posted for a couple of days and managed to convince him to go back to bed.”

            “Oh, man,” Stark says, setting down his coffee cup and grinning ear to ear. “Tell us, Cap, _did_ you ever get it?”

            “Even better,” Steve retorts dryly. “I was the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan.”

            Stark and Natasha laugh even harder, but Foster and Fitz both look confused. Thor sets a heavy pot on the table and says, “I have no idea what amuses you so.”

            “The Rockettes are a group of girls who dress in short skirts and thigh-high boots and dance,” Foster informs him. “But I don’t know what the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan is.”

            “It was…oh, God.” Steve rolls his eyes as he pulls out a chair. “It was this…show they put together to raise money for war bonds. One super-soldier wasn’t enough, they thought—they wanted a whole platoon of super-soldiers—so after Erskine died, it was either stay in a lab and have them try to recreate the serum from my blood or go on tour, and I figured, hell, there wasn’t any other way I would get to see the world at that point. So they wrote this whole song-and-dance routine, this ridiculous speech…some clown dressed up as Adolf Hitler would pop in and out and try to sneak up on me and I’d turn around and pretend to knock him out…and there was this whole chorus line that danced and sang a song called ‘Star-Spangled Man with a Plan.’”

            Foster gives a snort of laughter and hides her hand behind her mouth again. Thor, too, chuckles lightly. Fitz doesn’t, though, which surprises James a little. His expression is worried as he looks up at Steve. “That sounds _awful._ ”

            “It was,” Steve agrees. “Not just the song, which I _still_ get stuck in my head sometimes, but the whole rigmarole.”

            “How does it go?” Natasha asks innocently.

            “No,” Steve and James say in unison. They look at each other for a moment, and James sees a flash of gratitude in Steve’s eyes.

            “Bet I can find it online,” Stark says.

            “Bet you can,” Steve says. “But I don’t want to hear it.”

            “Seriously,” James says when Stark opens his mouth. He feels his eyes narrowing slightly. “There’s a line. Don’t cross it.”

            Stark holds up a hand. “Okay, okay. I’ll remember. No asking for private showings.”

            Steve shudders. “ _Definitely_ not.”

            “The last person who asked for something like that got his top front teeth knocked out,” James warns Stark.

            “You knocked a guy’s front teeth out?” Clint’s voice comes from the doorway behind them.

            “No, Morita did.” James moves out of the way and Clint gives him a nod and a brief smile as he passes by. He’s wearing a wheaten-colored t-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting cargo pants, his feet still bare, but otherwise no less dressed than anyone else in the room.

            “I’d almost forgotten about that,” Steve says softly.

            Stark raises his eyebrows at Clint. “Look at you. Don’t usually see you dressed before lunch.”

            “Yeah, well, I don’t usually slop coffee all over myself before breakfast, either,” Clint says ruefully. “Banner still sleeping?”

            “I guess. He hasn’t been down yet.”

            Steve dips a ladle into the pot on the table and begins dishing out its contents into the bowls he’s brought down. Thor places a bowl in front of Foster and asks, “Is anyone tired of porridge yet?”

            “Nope,” Stark says cheerfully.

            “If you don’t want to make breakfast—” Clint begins, accepting a bowl from Steve.

            “I have no objections. I only wondered.”

            Steve looks puzzled. “Did I miss something?”

            “Thor’s been making breakfast for the last month and a half,” Foster explains. “Wait’ll you taste this. It’s _really_ good.”

            “Didn’t I see you dipping pickles in chocolate pudding yesterday?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow.

            Steve winces with his entire body. “I’m sorry, _what?_ Here, Buck,” he adds, holding out a bowl.

            James takes it hesitantly, trying not to let his metal hand brush Steve’s fingers, as Foster says defensively, “It tasted good. And it’s not like they were dill pickles—it was those sweet gherkins.”

            “My mother ate a whole onion once,” James remembers, sitting down on the far side of the table, between Clint and Steve. “Not cooked or anything, just a raw onion. Rolled in brown sugar.”

            “Yeah, but that was when…she was…” Steve trails off, staring at James as though a thought has only just occurred to him.

            “Pregnant?” Foster supplies, raising an eyebrow. “I hope? Because ordinarily that would be _disgusting,_ but right now I’m actually considering trying it.”

            James nods, but doesn’t elaborate, and he hopes Foster doesn’t ask too many more questions. He doesn’t want to upset her by mentioning that he was—is—an only child. Steve smiles warmly at Foster, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Congratulations, Dr. Foster. When are you due?”

            “November seventh,” Foster replies instantly. “I’m almost five months along.” She smiles up at Thor, who smiles back, resting a hand lightly but protectively on her shoulder blade. James is again reminded powerfully of his mother, and of his father, too, of that look being exchanged frequently, a look of pride and delight and a sort of shared secret, of the utter happiness that he last saw when he was ten years old.

            Steve’s smile looks a little glassy, and James knows he’s trying not to think of the same thing. “Congratulations,” he says again.

            Banner stumbles in at that point. Steve opens his mouth, but Clint shakes his head quickly, and Banner moves wordlessly to the coffee pot and pours himself a cup. After three sips, he pulls out a chair. “Morning.”

            “Morning.” Stark hands him a bowl.

            There isn’t much chatter as everyone applies themselves to the food. James keeps trying to push the images out of his head, but they won’t leave, they’re some of his worst memories of _before_ , back when the world was only the ordinary kind of terrible. Gradually, he begins to recall that there’s something he might be able to do for the memories, but part of him isn’t sure he actually _can_ , not anymore.

            James has finished about half of his bowl, eating slowly and savoring the taste—it’s as good as Foster promised—before Wilson arrives, a weary slump to his shoulders and a closed-off look in his eyes. He doesn’t say anything to anyone, just takes the remaining bowl on the table and serves himself. Natasha and Steve exchange worried glances, but say nothing. Stark opens his mouth, then closes it and glares at Banner. The group finishes eating in silence, but it’s a different kind of silence this time, an almost tense silence, a worried one.

            The scrape of ladle in pot as Foster serves herself a second helping makes more than one person jump, but it also seems to recall Wilson to what James supposes can be called the real world, and he looks up. “Got a question for you, Stark,” he says in a slightly raspy voice.

            “Probably have an answer,” Stark replies instantly.

            “Where’s the nearest church?”

            “A _church?_ ” Stark looks taken aback. “What do you want to know about a _church_ for? It’s Saturday.”

            “There’s a Catholic church about half a mile south of here,” Clint volunteers. “Is that what you’re looking for? I think it’s called St. Theresa’s.”

            “Yeah, that’s good. Thanks.” Wilson pushes away from the table and stands. “I’m gonna take a walk.”

            James doesn’t give himself time to think before he speaks. “Mind if I go with you?”

            Everyone stares at him in various states of surprise, except for Wilson, whose expression hasn’t changed. “I’m not gonna be very good company,” he warns.

            James shrugs. “That’s okay. Neither am I.”

            Wilson nods and puts his bowl in the sink. James tries to ignore the seven pairs of eyes boring into his back as he follows Wilson to the elevator.

* * *

            There are a lot of people on the streets, and James panics slightly inwardly because he’s still worried about being recognized or worse, but he just bows his head and stays close to Wilson, and they don’t seem to draw attention. By the time they reach the final block, he realizes that everyone else is preoccupied with their own business and has no time to worry about someone who seems to be minding his own.

            He’s surprised at first by how _few_ people are going up and down the steps to the church, but as he follows Wilson up, he notices the sign by the door and realizes that the hours for confession have not yet begun. Likely things will pick up later on.

            James remembers, as a young man first coming into his sexuality in a world where even the word _sexuality_ was taboo, being afraid to step into a church lest he burst into flames, remembers the night after his first battle when he doubted the existence of _any_ kind of god, let alone a benevolent and loving one. But he also remembers the feeling of peace he got after doing what he’s about to do. So he dips his fingers in the basin of holy water and makes the sign of the cross, heads down the aisle, genuflects before the altar, and makes the sign again before turning to the side altar, almost as though he’s been to this church before, even though he knows his church was called St. Patrick’s.

            Rows of votive candles line the small altar at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary, which James finds oddly comforting. One or two are alight, the flames flickering and dancing gently in an unseen breeze, but most are not. It is only as James notices the wooden box with the slot in the top that he realizes he does not have any money to donate.

            He considers slipping out, or just sitting in a pew, but Wilson brushes by him and presses something against the palm of his metal hand. James doesn’t feel it, of course, but he knows there is something there and curls the fingers around it instinctively, then looks at it. A five-dollar bill. He looks up in surprise, but Wilson does not look back. Instead he puts a folded bill into the donation box, takes the taper, and lights one of the votives, then kneels before the altar and bows his head.

            James hesitates no longer. He still doesn’t know if this will work, doesn’t feel good enough (and certainly isn’t about to go to confession, he has too much to confess and even _with_ the seal in place he’s too afraid of what will happen), but he knows, somehow, that it’s all he ever could do. He pushes the money through the slot, picks up the taper, and lights four candles before kneeling as well.

            The rote words of the catechism present themselves at the front of his brain, an appropriate starting point for his prayers, and he bows his head and recites them silently, hoping that God or whoever is listening knows what he means behind the words someone else wrote. Prayer has never been his strong suit, even when he _was_ sure of what he believed in, but he does the best he can. Even he has to admit, however, that his best isn’t what it used to be, not when it comes to goodness and faith. And would God really listen to the prayers of the devil?

            At last, he gets up off his knees slowly and looks up at the face of the Blessed Virgin Mother. He knows it’s his imagination, but for just a moment, it looks like she smiles—not the way his mother used to, but the way Steve’s mother did.

            He leaves the church quietly by the back, hoping to escape the notice of the parishioners now trickling in for confession. To his surprise, he sees Wilson standing at the top of the steps, leaning against the stone archway, his arms folded across his chest. Wilson meets James’s eyes, then gives a brief nod and starts down the steps. James follows him, and as they start their silent walk back towards Avengers Tower, he falls into step with the other man.

            They’re about halfway back, on a deserted stretch of street, when Wilson breaks the silence. “Do you think that does any good?”

            James considers the question from all angles, then decides to be honest. “For them? I don’t know. Maybe it lets them know they aren’t forgotten. But it always helps me.”

            “There is that,” Wilson allows. They fall back into silence for a little longer before he says softly, “I was jealous, you know. When Steve told us who you were.”

            “Jealous?” James repeats, startled.

            “You’re his best friend, his buddy. He watched you fall to your death, or so he thought, and then it turned out you were alive. I never told him or anyone else, but even while I was trying to convince him you couldn’t be saved, I was jealous.”

            James notices Wilson reach up to finger something around his neck. He recalls noticing Wilson holding something in his hand and pressing it to his lips while he prayed in the church, but at the time he believed it was a cross or a rosary. Now he sees the metallic chain disappearing into Wilson’s t-shirt, thinks on his attitude that morning, thinks about the single candle burning on the altar, and says quietly, “Were you in the Army?”

            Wilson stops. James stops, too, watching the other man, a little wary, but Wilson doesn’t attack. “Air Force. 58th Paratroopers. Did a couple tours in Afghanistan. My wingman—John Riley—and I got chosen for the EXO-7 Falcon project, prototype personal wings rather than planes.” He looks up at James, and his eyes are haunted. “He was killed in action. Shot out of the sky before I could do a damned thing to save him. Seven years ago today.”

            James swallows against a dry throat. He knows that Wilson doesn’t want to hear anything as banal as _I’m sorry,_ knows that it wouldn’t do any good anyway. He also knows that something like that owes payment in kind. Wilson is obviously waiting. Softly, he says, “When I was ten…my mother found out she was pregnant just after my birthday. The baby came at the beginning of November. A girl. Emily Katherine Barnes.” He swallows again. “She lived for fifteen minutes.”

            Wilson nods slowly. “So Dr. Foster _is_ pregnant?”

            “And due in early November.”

            “I thought last night—but I didn’t want to ask. My mom always says you shouldn’t ask a woman if she’s pregnant unless you can actually see the baby crowning.” Wilson resumes walking, and James falls into step with him.

            They’re almost at the door to the tower before James speaks again. “Thank you, by the way. For the five dollar loan.”

            “I don’t expect you to pay me back,” Wilson says. “You can if you want to, but…you know, I didn’t think HYDRA gave you much in the way of pocket money, and even though I don’t think that church is one where you have to donate before you can light a candle, I know I always feel guilty if I don’t.”

            “You’re Catholic?” James realizes it’s a stupid question even as he asks it, even as he slides his access card into the slot in the front door and pushes it open.

            “Lapsed. I kind of lost a lot of faith while I was overseas, and I don’t think I’ve been to Mass since I was in my early twenties.”

            “Same here.”

            Wilson pauses and smiles slightly. “Not like you’ve had much of a choice.”

            “True.” James tries to smile in reply, but can’t quite manage it. “Hey…thanks for letting me go with you.”

            Wilson looks at him for a long minute. “Sometimes it’s good to spend a little bit of time with someone who understands there’s darkness in your soul.”

            The elevator doors open and Wilson steps in. James follows him, wondering if he is talking about James…or about himself.

* * *

            James spends the rest of the day in the background, just observing everyone. He doesn’t say anything to any of them—not even to Steve—but he watches, when they’re relaxing, when they’re exercising, when they’re cooking or eating. By the time dinner rolls around, he thinks he might have a handle on who they are, or at least who some of them are.

            Natasha avoids him without making it obvious that she’s doing so, and Jane spends a great deal of her time either upstairs in one of the labs or sitting on the living room sofa with a book, absently rubbing her swelling stomach. Thor is the only one who doesn’t seem to put on a front, Stark is either goofy and lighthearted or intensely focused and serious—there seems to be no in between—and Banner seems to be a good man, if a bit private and a little snippy at times.

            What surprises James is how he reacts to Fitz. The young man seems incredibly fragile, and it’s obvious he’s experienced some sort of trauma fairly recently. He jumps at shadows and spends a lot of time staring wistfully out the windows, like he’s waiting for someone, and his pale blue eyes are haunted worse than anyone else’s. He doesn’t speak very much, and when he does, it’s usually in fairly short sentences.

            James feels incredibly protective of him. In a lot of ways, Fitz reminds James of the babies in Jersey City, an innocent victim of a world he shouldn’t have to try and understand, someone who’s been hurt by people he ought to have been able to trust. He doesn’t ask what Fitz’s story is and nobody volunteers it, but he finds himself, when he’s not doing anything else, drifting towards the labs or the living room—wherever Fitz happens to be—and hovering in the background, a silent guardian.

            There’s no real scheduled lunch—everyone eats when they’re hungry—but Wilson makes dinner and everyone sits down to eat together. It smells amazing and James is surprised to discover that he’s actually hungry. Stark’s eyebrows lift in surprise when he sees what Wilson has made. “Gumbo?”

            “Jambalaya,” Wilson corrects him.

            “Pardon me. Are you from New Orleans?”

            “No,” Wilson says quietly. “Riley was.”

            “Who’s Riley?” Banner asks, accepting a plate.

            Wilson glances at James before answering. “My wingman, the other test for the EXO-7 Falcon project. He died in action seven years ago today.”

            Nobody says anything after that.

            That night when James goes up to his room at last, he’s restless, can’t seem to settle down. He sits and stares at his hands for a while, looks through the drawers to see what clothes Stark has given him, sits back down and tries to pray, and finally gives up. If he’s not going to be able to sleep, which it doesn’t seem like he is right at this moment, he’ll do a little more exploring. He tugs on a t-shirt to cover the scarring around his shoulder, slips his access card into the pocket of his sweatpants, and steps out barefoot into the hall.

            The lights are low, presumably on an energy-saving basis, and James notices for the first time that there actually aren’t very many doors on this hallway. The single door that leads to his suite of rooms faces the door that leads to the stairwell; there are two elevators on that side and one at the far end of the hallway. Other than that, there are only two other doors. One is a plain reddish-brown door, identical to his; he tries the knob and pushes it open and finds a pristine supply closet, which nobody seems to have touched, and he wonders whether or not anyone else lives on this floor.

            The answer becomes obvious when he sees the other door on the hallway. While the main part of the door is the same color as James’s, there is a decoration at head height that at first he thinks is just a simple star, but on closer inspection proves to be a facsimile of Captain America’s shield. This, then, must be Steve’s room, and James is struck by a powerful, overwhelming urge to speak to his friend. A part of him misses the easy camaraderie, the nights of conversation and togetherness that he and Steve enjoyed before the war—a _big_ part of him. On the other hand, there’s no guarantee that Steve even wants to talk to him.

            James hesitates, then knocks on the door. A muffled voice calls, “Come in!”

            James pushes the door open and steps carefully into the room. It’s about identical to his, except that there are a number of white boxes on the dressers, boxes that look like they hold papers of some kind, and the slightly scuffed and battered shield leans against the wall next to the bed.

            Steve is sitting on the edge of his bed in a white t-shirt and grey sweatpants, his hair slightly damp, staring at a small object in his hands—his compass. James can’t help the slight twinge of jealousy, knowing that Peggy Carter’s picture is taped to the inside of the lid. He swallows it and forces himself to ask, “She still around?”

            Steve starts out of his thoughts and looks up. “Yeah, sort of.” He snaps the compass shut. “What’s up, Buck?”

            “I just…wanted to talk.” James indicates the spot next to Steve and sits down when the other man nods. “What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

            Steve bites his lips and looks down at the compass again, but he doesn’t open it. “She’s dying. Dementia. I go visit her and…it’s like it’s the first time, like I’ve just come back. She’ll talk about how long it’s been and how she can’t believe it’s really me. We’ll visit for a while, and…” He swallows. “We go through that two, three times a visit, at least. She just keeps resetting.”

            “I can’t imagine anyone forgetting you,” James says without thinking.

            Steve looks up, and there’s a hollowness in his eyes. “You did.”

            James looks down at his hands, the metal one and the real one, and they both fall silent for a while. Finally, he says quietly, “I did know you, you know. On the helicarrier. I just didn’t know _how_.”

            “You said you didn’t.”

            “Yeah, ‘cause I’d told _them_ I knew you and they punished me for it,” James says bitterly. “I didn’t know then I wouldn’t be going back to them again. I was afraid they would hurt me again. You always stood up to pain better than I did.”

            Steve shrugs, although he looks worried. “I guess I was just more used to it.”

            James’s lips twitch upwards as a memory occurs to him. “Remember when I had the measles? I must’ve whined about how uncomfortable I was through my window at you for two days straight.”

            Steve chuckles softly. “Drove me nuts. Then I caught ‘em and I understood what you meant.”

            “I was scared then, too,” James says softly, his smile fading. “You got bronchitis after and I thought I—I thought _we_ were gonna lose you. I was convinced it was my fault.”

            “I remember,” Steve says. He sets his compass in the drawer of his nightstand. “I remember waking up to find you asleep in the chair next to my bed, holding my hand.”

            “Yeah, your mom let me stay with you while she worked. Neither one of us wanted to leave you.”

            “I think that was the only big illness you ever had, was the measles.”

            “You, on the other hand, caught everything that came around, and then some.”

            “I never had polio.”

            “And, believe me, I was never more grateful for anything in my life. Not until—” James stops, realizing he’s moving into dangerous waters, remembering how much Steve resented what he was so grateful for.

            “No, what?” Steve presses.

            James debates continuing to deny it, then decides to just get it over with—Steve is stubborn, he’ll pry it out of him eventually. “Not until your enlistment papers came back 4-F the first time.”

            Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Why? You knew that was all I wanted. My dad—”

            “Didn’t _make_ it, Steve. He _died._ Mustard gas was supposed to be illegal after that, but I knew the Germans weren’t gonna play by the rules.” James can’t stop the words falling from his mouth. “And then there were guns and tanks and bombs and—dammit, Steve, we’d watch those newsreels and all I could see was _you_ getting shot or gassed or blown up. You think I was scared of losing you to a disease your mom knew how to treat when you were ten? Imagine how much worse I felt about the idea of losing you fourteen years later.” He takes a deep, steadying breath. “I know you wanted to do your part, but…like I said at the school yesterday, don’t you know I need you to be safe?”

            “That cuts both ways, you know,” Steve says softly. “Did it never occur to you that I need you to be safe, too?”

            James desperately tries to kill the flare of hope that rises in his chest. Steve doesn’t mean it like that— _can’t_ mean it like that, James doesn’t deserve something like that. “Are you trying to tell me that you only tried to enlist because I did?”

            “Not the first time,” Steve admits. “I tried because I wanted to do my part on the front lines. The other four times— _that_ was because of you.”

            “I’m glad you did,” James admits. “Otherwise I never would’ve seen you again. If Zola and Schmidt hadn’t killed me—eventually—they might’ve blown up New York after all. Or I’d’ve been turned into ‘the asset’ anyway and…”

            “Don’t,” Steve says swiftly. “Don’t think about it. You’re here and I’m here. Schmidt and Zola are gone.”

            James stares at one of the boxes without really seeing it. “Clint told me what happened this morning,” he says quietly. “Or what he knows. I’d like to hear it from you.”

            Steve doesn’t act like he doesn’t know what James means. He sighs, staring vacantly ahead of himself, too. “The night you fell from the train, Gabe succeeded in capturing Zola,” he says slowly. “He told Phillips that Schmidt was ready to launch the _Valkyrie_ and attack New York. We put together a plan to stop it. I went after Schmidt and more or less let myself get captured, so the others would know where to go. We got into his base, and…I ended up boarding the _Valkyrie_ as it was taking off. A smaller craft launched…I took it over and wound up face-to-face with Schmidt, just the two of us, nobody else on the ship. He had this cube—the Tesseract—and I knocked it loose from the mounting he had it in while we were fighting. He grabbed it and…I don’t know, Buck. It vaporized him or warped him to another dimension or something. Anyway, he was gone, but that left the plane with the bombs on it unpiloted. There was nowhere safe to take it down except the ocean.” He swallows hard, twice, then says in a low voice, “Peggy stayed in radio contact with me until I went under. Nothing important, just nonsense, but it kept my mind off of the fact that I was basically committing suicide. The last—oh, God.” His eyes squeeze shut. “The last thing I remember thinking, before I blacked out, was to wonder if that was what you felt like when you fell…”

            James looks at Steve in horror, feeling his heart wrench, but although Steve opens his eyes, he stares fixedly at his hands. “When I woke up…S.H.I.E.L.D. did up a dummy room for me that looked basically like a private hospital room from the forties, and an agent dressed up like an Army nurse and came in to talk to me, told me I was recovering from my injuries. But the radio…they had a baseball game playing, and I realized it was one I’d _been_ to—remember in May of ’42, we went to see the Yankees play the Red Sox?”

            James almost smiles. “Yeah, and you got hit in the head with a foul ball?”

            “Yeah, that’s the one.” The barest hint of a grin tugs at Steve’s lips, fading instantly. “Anyway, that’s what got me suspicious. When I challenged the agent, she called in backup and…I panicked. I thought—hell, I don’t know. I figured I’d been taken prisoner by HYDRA and they were going to try to get information out of me…or that they wanted me to believe it _was_ 1942 for some reason. I kicked the two agents through the wall—it wasn’t much more than stage scenery—and ran out into the facility, then burst out onto the streets and wound up in the middle of Times Square.” He shakes his head slightly, his gaze vacant once more. “It’s—it’s so _different,_ Bucky, you wouldn’t recognize it anymore. The buildings are so huge, and so close together…and there are these electronic billboards, lights all hours of the day and night, and the _traffic…_ I only knew where I was because I saw a sign, but it was just…it was overwhelming. And then I heard a voice tell me ‘at ease’…I turned around and met Nick Fury for the first time, and he apologized but said they’d been trying to ease me into it. That’s when he told me I’d been asleep for almost seventy years.” He takes a deep breath, and James is startled and alarmed to note that his hands are trembling faintly. “Two weeks later, he came into the gym where I was beating the hell out of a series of heavy bags because I couldn’t sleep and told me that my country needed me. That’s how I met…” He gestures vaguely upwards. “Everyone expected me to be this…hero, a leader and a soldier and a member of the Greatest Generation, but…you know, nobody understood that I was just a scared kid, and one who’d just lost his whole world.”

            James has to stop himself from reaching over and taking Steve into his arms to comfort him, even though that’s exactly what he would have done when they were kids. But things have changed and he doesn’t deserve to comfort Steve and even if he did it would be too close to betraying the feelings he still can’t deny, however hard he tries. “I know the feeling. It’s hell to realize you’ve missed out on seventy years…”

            “Not the years, you chump. You.” Steve looks up and tries to smile, but his eyes are extremely wet, and he doesn’t try for too long. “I took on Schmidt _two days_ after I lost you. I had Peggy and I cared about her, but…she’s not _you_ and she never was, never could’ve been, even if we’d all had our whole lives together. And then I crash into the ocean and the last thing I hear is her voice and the last thing I s—the last thought that passes through my head is that at least I’ll get to see you again. I wake up and find out that the war’s over and I’m a damn legend and Peggy’s an old woman who can’t remember what year it is and you’re still dead and I’m not. I was hurting like hell. I fought because I had to—all I wanted to do was go back to sleep and make everything stop, but it wouldn’t and I couldn’t. I _still_ can’t. I can count the number of nights I’ve slept for more than a couple of hours in the last two years on one hand. And every time I think I’m starting to get a handle on things, something comes along and knocks me off my feet…” He drops his head to his hands.

            “At least you _volunteered_ for this, to a point,” James says, looking down at his own hands again. “You _wanted_ to join the Army. You signed up for Erskine’s super-soldier project. I didn’t ask Zola to experiment on me, and I sure as hell didn’t ask to become the Winter Soldier. But…I know what you mean. I don’t think either one of us expected anything like this.” He runs his right hand, his real hand, through his hair for a moment and flinches at the greasy feel, the innumerable knots. “I don’t even remember what I looked like anymore.”

            Steve looks up at him for a long moment. Finally, without saying anything, he gets up and walks over to the dresser, lifts the lid off of one of the boxes. James watches silently as he reaches into it and lifts out a book, somewhat battered, with a brown cover. He returns to the bed, sits down next to James again, and silently opens the book, handing one side of it to James.

            It’s a sketchbook.

            James remembers that Steve was always drawing, everybody knew that the best present to get Steve Rogers was a sketchbook and a pack of pencils, and James was always so proud of him and his work, always said that someday his art would be hanging in museums around the world, and Steve always laughed and blushed and it always made James want to kiss him. He pushes that thought firmly out of his mind and focuses on the book in front of him. The first couple of pages are filled with random sketches, trees and flowers and bits of architecture. But then James turns the page and is confronted, quite unexpectedly, with a full-page drawing of a face.

            It’s a _good_ drawing, even for Steve, it looks like the person on the page is physically present. There’s an arrogant tilt to the jaw, a flash of amusement in the eyes, and a faint smile on the lips. The person has slightly long hair, a strand of which has flopped across his eyes, and a clean-shaven face. His fingers tremble slightly as he touches it lightly, then looks up at Steve.

            “Keep going,” Steve says, his voice shaking just a little.

            Slowly, James does, his eyes widening and his lips parting slightly in astonishment the more he sees. These are the best drawings he thinks Steve has ever done, and he hasn’t ever seen them before, he knows he hasn’t seen any of them. They’re all of the same man, sitting on a bench, leaning on a railing, lounging in a chair, in profile, full-face view, bent over a car’s engine, dancing with a wispy, faceless girl…

            And sleeping. There are quite a few pictures of him sleeping, sprawled on his back with one hand draped over his stomach and the other dangling by the floor, on his stomach with his hand curled under his head and one leg crossed behind the other knee, curled on his side on a broken-down sofa, and one of him sitting on the floor, his head tilted back and his eyes closed.

            “You’ve—you’ve got a whole sketchbook full of drawings of me?” James finally asks, amazed.

            Steve’s cheeks flush faintly pink, and he waves at the boxes. “About half of these are drawings of you, Buck. You were always my favorite subject.”

            James wants to ask why, he wants to ask and to have the answer be more than just _because you were convenient_ , but he doesn’t because he still doesn’t believe he deserves anything more than he had for the first twenty-eight years of his life and devoutly hopes he might someday be good enough to earn again. “They’re good. They’re really good.”

            “Thanks.” Steve looks steadily up at James, like he’s hoping for more, or at least expecting it.

            James can’t say more, though, can’t trust himself to say anything else or he’ll say too much and he knows it. Gingerly, he hands the sketchbook back to Steve. “Maybe sometime you can show me the others, but…I guess I ought to get to bed.”

            Is it his imagination, or do Steve’s shoulders sag, just a little bit? “Yeah, okay,” he says quietly. “’Night, Buck.”

            “’Night, Steve.”

            James shuts the door quietly behind him and goes down the hall to his room and puts on the sweatpants he wore the night before and crawls under the covers.

            And he gets about two hours of sleep that night, but at least he doesn’t remember the nightmares when they’re over.

* * *

            After breakfast the next morning, most of them wind up in the living room on the seventy-eighth floor.

            It’s started to rain, a steady drizzle, which has most of them pursuing quiet pastimes. Fitz and Banner share one of the sofas, Fitz with a blanket tucked over his legs and Banner with a pair of square gold spectacles perched on the end of his nose, both of them reading. Wilson sits on the other sofa, playing with something small and plastic-looking that gives off quiet _beeps_ and _pings_ every so often. Clint, sitting in one armchair, keeps staring absently out the window, watching the rain or watching for the approach of an airplane or something, James has no idea. Steve sprawls in another armchair, a sketchpad open on his knees and a pencil in his fingers. James stands in the background, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest as he silently watches the others.

            Thor and Foster have gone on a walk, Foster claiming that she’s going stir-crazy and would rather be outside even if it _is_ raining, so they took an umbrella and went to play tourist, as Thor has evidently not seen the city despite having been there for a month and a half. Stark disappeared upstairs to one of his labs immediately after finishing his breakfast, muttering something about cleaning up, which made Fitz blush, James doesn’t know why. Natasha is in one of the gyms, working out.

            James considers joining her, then decides against it. She’s still avoiding him, it’s obvious she’s afraid he’s going to start talking to her about the Red Room, not that he blames her, but he can’t believe she doesn’t realize that he doesn’t want to talk about _his_ past, either. Nobody in the living room seems to mind his presence, so he elects to remain, at least for the moment.

            Stark comes in then and throws himself onto the other end of Wilson’s sofa. “Just saw Talbot on the news, the bastard.”

            Steve looks up from his sketchpad. “Who?”

            “Guy named Glenn Talbot,” Stark says, rolling his eyes. “He’s on a vendetta against both S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA.”

            Wilson grumbles under his breath as his device beeps again, then looks up. “I know Colonel Talbot. He’s Air Force. Decent officer, great husband, great father, but a complete asshole.”

            “Well, it’s Brigadier-General Talbot now. That’s what he was on the news about, he’s gotten a promotion for his efforts to stamp out HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D.”

            This information is obviously somewhat distressing to Steve, Clint, and Fitz, the latter of whom almost drops his book as he asks, “Is he—has he actually done any—any—” There’s an almost panicked look that comes into his eyes.

            “Nah,” Stark says breezily, smiling crookedly at Fitz. “Maria told me he’s been relying on old information and out-of-date informants, so he hasn’t actually done very much damage at all to S.H.I.E.L.D., and I doubt he’s done much damage to HYDRA, either, quite frankly.”

            “Guy couldn’t find his ass with both hands,” Wilson adds. He swears under his breath and tosses his device aside.

            “Trouble?” Stark asks, raising an eyebrow.

            “Goddamned Elite Four,” Wilson growls.

            Steve glances up at James, who is relieved to see that his old friend looks equally confused.

            Just then, the elevator doors slide open and four people come out, three women and a man. James recognizes the team from Jersey City, minus the man he presumes to be the leader, but they all look exhausted—not in the way that sleep will do anything to alleviate, just weary and worn down. The youngest woman walks straight off the elevator and over to Stark, who rises to his feet as she puts her arms around his neck and leans her head against his shoulder. James lifts his eyebrows in surprise and notices Steve’s meet in a mildly disapproving frown.

            “Hey, Dad,” she says softly.

            Now it’s Steve who looks surprised as Stark hugs her back. “Hey.” He pulls back slightly and studies her with loving concern. “You okay?”

            The young woman tries to smile. “It’s been a hell of a week.”

            “Dad?” Steve repeats incredulously.

            “Yeah, you missed that part.”

            The other young woman, the one James hit with the pebbles, crosses to Fitz and takes both his hands in hers. Fitz smiles up at her. “All right?”

            “Mm-hmm.” The woman smiles and nods, but it looks forced to James.

            Fitz obviously thinks so, too, because his smile vanishes. “What’s wrong?”

            The woman hesitates and looks over the other, whose expression is perfectly blank and terrifies James a little, then turns back to Fitz. “It’s like Skye said, it’s…it’s been a rough week.”

            Clint looks around a little anxiously. “Where’s—” he begins.

            “Paperwork,” the oldest woman interrupts. “He’ll be down in a few minutes.”

            Clint eyes the elevator, but the man forestalls him. “I wouldn’t, man. He said he’d be right down.”

            “Yeah.” Clint heaves a sigh and perches on the arm of the sofa.

            Stark guides the young woman to a seat and gestures for the other two to sit down as well. “So how long are you here for?”

            The oldest woman shrugs. “At least overnight. Hopefully a couple of days. We could all do with the rest.”

            Fitz licks his lips, then asks in a hesitant voice, “How’s—how’s Ward?”

            The two young women exchange glances, and then the one next to Fitz says, “Still not talking.”

            James wonders who Ward is, and whether he experienced the same trauma that Fitz has, if that’s why he isn’t talking, but he stays silent, he tries to keep from being noticed. Fitz swallows hard. “He’s not being—being—”

            “Tortured?” the oldest woman supplies, a flash in her eyes. “No. Nobody’s laid a hand on him. He’s doing that to himself.”

            James is thoroughly lost now, but Fitz obviously knows what’s going on, he lowers his eyes and looks away. A silence settles on the group, broken when the elevator doors open and Clint starts upright, only to sink back, subdued, when Natasha steps off. She smiles warmly when she sees the four newcomers. “Hey. When did you guys get here?”

            “Just a couple minutes ago,” the oldest woman says, giving a brief half-smile in reply.

            “Long week?”

            “You have no idea.”

            “Can we back up for a minute, please?” Steve says, looking at the young woman sitting next to Stark. “ _Dad?_ ”

            “I adopted Skye,” Stark says simply. “The last of the paperwork came through the day Fitz got his cast off. Which means she can absolutely call me Dad.”

            “Sorry you missed the party, Agent Rogers,” the older woman says, and James’s eyebrows shoot upwards at the word _agent—_ Steve seems to have shifted his allegiance, no longer seems to belong to the military.

            “Yeah, me, too,” Steve says with a little smile. “Congratulations, Skye.”

            “Thanks.” The youngest woman—Skye, James supposes—smiles a little shyly, albeit tiredly.

            The man hesitates, then asks, “How’s your—mission or whatever you’re calling it—how’s it going?”

            Steve hesitates and glances over his shoulder at James, who winces but moves forward. Skye’s eyes widen and she sits up a little straighter. “Is that—are you—?” she stammers.

            James swallows hard before saying quietly, “My name is James Barnes.” He drops both the “sergeant” and his middle name, slightly intimidated by this group.

            The man gets to his feet and holds out his hand, his expression serious. “My grandfather’s told me a lot about you, sir. I’m Agent Antoine Triplett.”

            James takes the young man’s hand a little uncertainly. Since he only knows one black man old enough to have a grandson, he says, “Gabe Jones?”

            “That’s right. He was my mom’s dad.”

            James notes the past tense and winces inwardly, realizing what that means, but he just manages a smile and a nod and retreats slightly. Triplett seems to understand, because he backs off as well and takes a seat next to Wilson, who smiles and clasps his hand briefly in greeting. Stark gestures to the other two women. “While we’re in the business of introducing you around, this is Agent Jemma Simmons and Agent Melinda May.”

            “Nice to meet you, Agent Barnes,” May says with a nod.

            “I’m sorry, _Agent_ Barnes?” Wilson asks, raising his eyebrows. “Agent of what?”

            “Of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” May replies, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

            James tries desperately to remember if he’s ever heard that he was part of S.H.I.E.L.D. and can’t come up with anything, he’s _sure_ that even the Howling Commandos were considered part of the military. “I—I don’t—I think you have me confused with someone else,” he stammers out, unconsciously stepping sideways and taking refuge behind the armchair where Steve sits. Steve looks up at him worriedly, then back at May.

            “You wouldn’t know about that,” Triplett says, glancing from May to James. “S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t founded until after the war. But once it had been set up…Agents Carter and Dugan had you posthumously added to the ranks of agents, and your name’s on the Wall of Valor.”

            James’s breath catches in his throat for a minute, and he looks down, unable to meet anyone’s eyes, because he doesn’t belong on any kind of wall of valor, he’s not a brave man and never has been, and he certainly doesn’t deserve any honor Dum-Dum Dugan bestowed on him because he betrayed the man, he killed a man who had once been his friend…

            Any further conversation is cut off by the sound of the elevator doors opening. Clint gets to his feet and this time takes a couple of steps forward as another man comes out. They embrace, holding one another tightly, and James realizes that this must be Phil Coulson, Clint’s fiancé. He wonders how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other, then decides it doesn’t matter—it’s obviously been too long, for either of them.

            He can empathize.

            After long moments, Clint pulls back and looks down at the other with an unmistakably tender look on his face. “You okay?” he asks gently.

            James can only see part of the man’s face, but he sees the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile. “I am now.”

            “You need to take better care of yourself,” Clint murmurs.

            “Uh, paging Mr. Pot, there’s a Mr. Kettle on line two,” Stark says dryly.

            The other man turns a slightly reproachful smirk on Stark, and James feels his face drain of color. He recognizes the face—a bit older than the one he recalls, a few more lines and a little less hair, but nonetheless a familiar face to him—and it terrifies him. Hoping to avoid notice for a little longer, he shrinks back, knowing that _here,_ at last, is the one person who will never forgive him, the person who will see him for what he truly is.

            Steve looks up and sees James, and his face fills with concern. “You okay?” he asks, his voice barely above a murmur.

            James leans on the back of the chair and gets as close to Steve’s ear as he can before whispering, with a slight nod in the man’s direction, “Is he…you know, like us?”

            “Coulson?” Steve’s eyebrows lift in surprise as he looks at the man, who is explaining to Stark why he doesn’t consider Talbot a very significant threat at the moment. “No, as far as I know, he’s completely ordinary. Why?”

            James’s mouth goes dry. He can’t answer, just shakes his head minutely and straightens up and contemplates jumping out the window to keep the man from noticing him. Almost before the thought leaves his head, however, Stark says suddenly, “Oh! Where are my manners? Coulson, meet the famous Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Barnes, this is Phil Coulson, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

            Coulson looks directly at him, his face paling and his lips pressed into a thin line, and James freezes like a deer transfixed at the end of a hunter’s gun. He waits, trying not to start trembling, staring at the man who caused him to fail a mission for the first time, wondering how he failed to think of this, how it never occurred to him that the man who has loved Clint for almost twenty years is the same man who nearly tore the Winter Soldier limb from limb for hurting him.

            After a moment, Coulson says in a tight voice, “We’ve met. Sort of.”

            James swallows hard, conscious of the fact that every eye in the room is fixed on him, and tries to summon up the courage to tender an apology he knows won’t be accepted. What he actually blurts out, however, surprises him. “Did you get them all out?”

            Coulson’s expression morphs from anger to surprise to suspicion. “Get who out?” he demands.

            James has a brief moment of panic—he’s been so sure that the team found the lab, that they rescued the victims. “In Jersey City—the HYDRA facility—”

            “You were _there?”_ Coulson sounds like he’s heading back into anger territory, and James is _incredibly_ glad he didn’t reveal himself, and he’s also glad there’s an armchair and a good amount of space between them now.

            “Yeah, I—” James turns to look at the young woman introduced as Simmons, who is white as a sheet and looks on the verge of tears. “I hope I didn’t hurt you too bad. With the pebbles.”

            Simmons’ eyes widen, but she shakes her head quickly. “No, it—it didn’t even bruise, it just…got my attention. Which I assume was the idea.”

            “Okay, wait. _Wait,_ ” Clint interrupts, putting a hand on Coulson’s shoulder and shifting position subtly so that he, too, is between his fiancé and James. “I’m missing something here. What was in Jersey City? I mean, obviously, a HYDRA facility, but what was the big deal about it?”

            James swallows again, watching Coulson, whose eyebrows meet in a frown. It’s May who speaks up, her voice quiet but devoid of emotion. “We were tracking a rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and we managed to follow him as far as an old refinery in Jersey City, then lost him. While we were scouring the ruins, something hit Simmons in the shoulder—I guess that was you,” she adds, her eyes flicking briefly up to James before returning to the group at large. “We followed a trail, not a very obvious one, to the door of what turned out to be a fairly large HYDRA stronghold. Skye and I went in and found three rooms full of extremely dead bodies. Then we got to the lab…” Her voice cracks for the first time and she closes her eyes for a moment.

            “We’re not sure what they were doing in there,” Skye says softly, “but they were doing…experiments. They had seven…seven victims, lying on beds in the labs, and…the restraints were broken, but they’d obviously been strapped down for a long time, they had electrodes glued all over them and…” Her voice, too, breaks, and she buries her face in Stark’s shoulder. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and looks up at Coulson, obviously concerned.

            “Are they all right?” James asks, wrapping his arms around his midsection and looking desperately at Coulson. “I—I couldn’t get them out myself…”

            Coulson stares at him for a long moment, then nods slowly. “They’re alive.” All the energy seems to go out of him, and he sags slightly against Clint, who holds him tightly. “There’s a hospital in Brooklyn that S.H.I.E.L.D. has access to, and…that’s where they are.” He sighs, rubbing at his forehead. “I probably need to go by, check on them…”

            “I’ll go with you,” Clint says quickly. “You don’t need to be driving on your own. And your team needs a break.”

            “Yeah,” Coulson says. He looks up at Clint and manages a smile. “Thanks.”

            James worries at his lower lip for a moment, but before he can work up the courage to say anything, to his surprise, Steve gets to his feet. “With your permission, Director,” he says, quietly but seriously, “Bucky and I will accompany you, too.”

            Coulson stares at both Steve and James for a moment, and a muscle in his jaw works. James doesn’t think, he just acts on instinct, he takes a half-step forward and shifts his stance so that he’s in front of Steve, protecting him.

            Evidently, this is the right thing to do, because Coulson suddenly relaxes a fraction and nods. “Permission granted.”

            “Take B.E.C.K.A.,” Stark suggests. “Keys are in the garage. And if Talbot’s looking for you, he won’t stop a vehicle registered in my name.”

            “Thanks, Stark.” Coulson almost smiles as he turns and heads for the elevator.

            James brushes Steve’s hand as they follow and whispers, “Thank you.”

            Steve smiles in reply, touching James’s hand lightly. “I want to meet these people you saved, too,” he whispers back.

            The elevator is far too small for them, James thinks as they descend, even though there’s plenty of room, this elevator could likely accommodate most of the people who live here at once, but it’s too small for both him and Coulson, he can feel Coulson’s distaste for him like a physical presence. Steve and Clint keep exchanging looks the whole way down, but nobody says anything. James can’t help letting out a gasp of relief when the doors open.

            B.E.C.K.A. turns out to be an SUV painted the same color as the uniform James remembers wearing in the war. Clint grabs a set of keys from the wall and gets behind the wheel; Coulson climbs in next to him. James debates for a moment before taking the seat behind Coulson, on the basis that if the man can’t see him, he’s less likely to attempt to kill him. Steve gets in behind Clint.

            For a while, nothing is spoken except for Coulson’s quiet voice giving directions. James sits as far back in the seat as he can, hugging himself and trying very hard not to panic. At last, however, Steve says, “Okay, you said you’d ‘sort of’ met. _How?_ Because, Buck, you look like you think we’re going to give you a pair of cement overshoes and dump you in the East River.”

            James can’t even summon up a smile at the comment. Nodding at Coulson, he says quietly, “This is the only man who ever came close to out-fighting the Winter Soldier. Even you weren’t that hard to fight against.”

            Steve’s eyebrows shoot upwards, and Clint takes his eyes off the road for a moment to glance to his right. “Phil?”

            There’s a moment of silence before Coulson speaks, so softly he wouldn’t be audible if the vehicle didn’t muffle all outside sounds. “I was scared. We were fighting before that mission, we hadn’t talked in three days before you got captured, and…I couldn’t stand the thought of you being in some prison cell thinking I hated you. I was frantic about trying to rescue you so I could tell you I didn’t mean it, I loved you and I’d never leave you. It never occurred to me that there was a chance you’d be dead before I ever found you. And then I got there, and you were kneeling on the ground with a gun pressed to your head and cuts and bruises all over and…and I was terrified.” James can see Coulson’s reflection, faintly, in his window, as he turns to look at Clint. “I don’t think I could do it again, even if I wasn’t twenty years older now than I was then. But…I’d do anything to make sure you were safe, Clint. I always would, and I always will.”

            Clint reaches over and grips Coulson’s hand tightly, running his thumb over the back of it. James swallows against a sudden lump in his throat and looks down. It’s then that he notices Steve covering his left hand, the metal hand, with his right, and he jerks back reflexively, hating that he couldn’t feel his best friend’s touch, hating even more that Steve still thinks he deserves it, and he tries to ignore the sudden flash of pain in Steve’s eyes.

            The rest of the ride is silent. Finally Clint waves a badge at a small grey box and drives the car into a parking garage that doesn’t seem to be attached to the regular garage. There are fewer than a dozen parking spots, none of which are occupied, and a single door leading to a stairwell. James trails after the other three, apprehensive and uncertain but deciding to trust that Steve won’t let anything happen to him, trusting that S.H.I.E.L.D. is nothing like HYDRA, that these people won’t hurt him as long as he does what they want.

            At the top of the stairwell is a short hallway, at the end of which are two sets of doors, one after the other. The first parts obediently when they arrive, and Coulson walks unhesitatingly towards the second. A green light comes on with a pleasant _ding_ and the doors slide open for him to walk through, and Clint and Steve follow him with the same sound. When James tries to follow, however, the light turns red and a buzzer sounds and the doors slam shut in front of him. He checks, bites his lower lip, and takes a half-step back.

            He’s about to say that he’ll wait by the car after all when Coulson says in a flat but clear voice, “Director override: Coulson, Phillip J.”

            The light flickers from red to green, the pleasant _ding_ sounds, and the doors open, allowing James to step through. He swallows hard and manages to look at Coulson and half-whisper, “Thank you.”

            Coulson just nods and sets off down the hallway, obviously knowing where he’s going. Steve looks around him curiously, but James keeps his eyes fixed on Coulson, partly because he’s afraid of getting left behind and partly because he doesn’t want to look like he’s trying to gather information, he doesn’t want to give Coulson any reason to suspect that he voluntarily works for HYDRA. Despite the man’s claims that his attack on the Winter Soldier was a one-time thing, James doesn’t know what the man might be capable of if he thinks that Clint, or the infants, are in danger. More than that, Coulson is trusting him, is willing to allow him access to a facility he’s clearly supposed to be forbidden from entering, and more than that, to a _hospital,_ a place where people are at their most vulnerable. James won’t give Coulson reason to regret giving him that trust.

            A few twists and turns, and they arrive at a hallway that dead-ends at a large white door with a latticed window set in it. A woman in a white lab coat stands in front of it, studying a clipboard, but at the sound of their footsteps she looks up and jumps. “Director Coulson, sir! I didn’t know you were coming.”

            “It’s okay. Neither did I.” Coulson joins her. “How are they?”

            “Physically, they’re perfectly fine,” the woman replies slowly. “It’s odd, sir. When you brought them in, there were abrasions around the wrists and ankles, from the restraints, and they had burns all over their torsos from the electrodes. They shouldn’t have healed that quickly, and I’d expect some scarring. I’d imagine we’ll know more when we’ve broken the codes on those files Agent Skye sent over. But…well, there’s nothing wrong with _any_ of them. Physically, anyway.”

            “And otherwise?” Coulson asks sharply.

            “They don’t cry, sir,” the woman says quietly. “Not one of them has made a single sound since they’ve been here. They communicate through some kind of sign language, but it’s not any known standard sign language—they all seem to understand each other, but we can’t understand what most of their signs mean. It doesn’t seem to bother them, much, with one exception—there’s one sign where they get very distressed that we don’t understand what they’re saying.”

            “Can we see them?” Coulson asks.

            The woman looks askance at James, but nods and reaches for the door. “Right this way.”

            James braces himself, not sure what he’s going to see when he enters the room. To his surprise, it’s a round room, the center of which is taken up with a platform at roughly chest height with a low, clear barrier around the edges. There are toys on the platform—teddy bears, alphabet blocks, building blocks, and soft foam shapes—and sitting around it are the babies.

            Next to James, Steve inhales sharply, and Clint lets out a low gasp, but James focuses on the babies, his eyes going rapidly from one to the other. They are sitting up on their own, free of the tubes and wires, showing no ill effects, clean and clad in different-colored one-piece suits. All seven turn to look at the door when it opens, and one sees Coulson and _nods,_ actually nods as if in greeting. James recognizes the infant instantly as the one he picked up in the facility.

            “They’re very intelligent, sir,” the woman tells him. “They may not be able to communicate with us—yet—but I give it a week. They _understand_ well enough, anyway, and they have amazing memories. I strongly suspect that they remember everything that’s ever happened to them…and I’m not sure that’s something we can change, even if we’d want to.”

            Coulson closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them, there’s an expression of terrible pain on his face. The babies look at him for a moment, then look at one another. One of them, completely bald and wearing a dark red outfit, pats its left arm, and the others nod. The woman says, “That’s…we’ve seen that one before, but we don’t understand it. A lot of times they’ll pat us on the arm when we’re holding them. I wonder if it’s something they’ve been conditioned to do.”

            The baby James picked up, who’s wearing a pink outfit, looks at the woman for a moment, then Clint, then Steve, before turning to James. As soon as those dark brown eyes lock onto James’s, the baby’s eyebrows go up for a moment, and then, suddenly, unexpectedly, it breaks into a sunny grin and stretches out its arms imploringly.

            James doesn’t think, he responds instinctively to the appeal in the little body, he takes two steps across the room and lifts the infant off the platform, holding it the way he did in the facility. The baby snuggles against him, wrapping its fist in his shirt again, and smiles up at him. James can’t help smiling back.

            Behind him, the woman sounds shaken. “She—she hasn’t responded like that to _anyone._ I mean, none of them have, but she—we’ve been calling her Katie—she hardly lets _anyone_ pick her up, let alone asks to be picked up.”

            James turns around, suddenly worried. “Sorry, should—should I not have done that?”

            Steve smiles softly, but Clint and Coulson both still look stunned and the woman shakes her head. “No, no, it’s just—how do you _do_ that? Like I said, Katie is—she’s the most mistrustful of all of them, and _none_ of them have smiled at all in the three days they’ve been here.”

            The baby—Katie—gives the woman a look, then turns and deliberately pats James’s upper arm, his left arm, the metal one. James winces instinctively, he’s still ashamed of the metal arm, but a look of comprehension suddenly comes into Clint’s eyes. “James, when you took out everyone at the facility in Jersey City…did you pick—Katie—up?”

            “Yeah,” James says slowly, trying to figure out what Clint is thinking. “I just…she looked so unhappy, I couldn’t…”

            “And you held her just like that?” Clint presses. James nods. “That’s it, then. That’s what the sign means, patting the left arm. It means…I guess it’s something like hero, or friend, or somewhere in between the two. It means that you’re somebody they trust.”

            Katie shakes her head. She pats James’s arm again, hesitates, then touches, first his heart, then his mouth. Steve looks from James to Clint and back. “Not somebody they trust,” he says softly. “Somebody they love—or is it somebody they know loves _them?_ ”

            This time, Katie nods her head yes. James feels that lump in his throat again, and he swallows hard, looking down at the infant in his arms. “I’m—I’m not a good person,” he mumbles.

            The look Katie gives him reminds him of the looks Steve used to give him when he said things like that. She pats his arm a third time, then leans her head on his chest, right next to the scar tissue. James cups the back of her head with his right hand and rests his cheek against the softness of her hair, for just a moment. He thinks of the candle he lit for Emily Katherine, of nights sitting at his best friend’s bedside and willing him to recover, and he begins to feel, for the first time, that he might deserve a little bit of forgiveness.

            At last, reluctantly, he sets Katie back on the platform with the other babies, who have watched the whole time. Katie looks up at him with big brown eyes, then taps her forehead with her fingertips, and James knows what she wants, and he bends over and kisses her forehead gently. Before he can straighten, she grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls his head back down, and he winces slightly at the sharp pain, but then she cranes her head up and presses her lips against his forehead, in obvious imitation of a kiss. She lets go and smiles up at him, and he can’t help but smile back.

            “So _that’s_ what that means,” the woman murmurs from behind him. “They want a kiss…”

            “Did you do that back there, too?” Clint asks.

            “Yeah,” James answers. “I didn’t know why…it just seemed like the right thing to do.”

            The next baby, the one in the red outfit, taps its forehead, too, so James kisses each one before stepping back, reluctantly, and joining the others. Coulson continues to stare at him for a long minute before turning for the door, the others following.

            At first James thinks they’re leaving, but instead, Coulson opens a door about halfway along the hallway and enters. James is a little nervous about following, but relaxes fractionally when he sees that the room they enter is devoid of all furnishings except a long table ringed with chairs and a flat black box. Coulson presses a button on top of the box, takes a seat at the head of the table, and looks up at James.

            “I’ll need a full report of what happened in Jersey City, Agent Barnes,” he says quietly.

            James finds the words _Agent Barnes_ to be almost as alien and unfamiliar as _Sergeant Barnes,_ feels even less like he deserves that title, but he understands what Coulson is asking, he thinks he sort of understands what is going on. He takes a seat at the table and begins to speak as calmly as he can. Steve sits down next to him and Clint sits next to Coulson, and they both look back and forth anxiously, but Coulson’s eyes never leave James’s as he talks. He leaves all personal feelings out of the report and merely recites his movements, precisely and accurately, from the moment he arrived at the old refinery to the minute he left.

            “How did you know about the facility?” Coulson asks when James finishes.

            “A man named Malachi Richards told me,” James answers promptly. “He was working for HYDRA, under duress.”

            “And he told you for…what, the same reason Ramstead told you about the elementary school?”

            James shakes his head. “He volunteered the information after I saved him.”

            Coulson’s eyes darken slightly. “He’s HYDRA and you saved him? Why?”

            “Because of his daughter,” James says softly. “His wife died when she was born—or so he told me—and he’s all his daughter has left. That’s why he was working for HYDRA, too. They were holding his daughter hostage—threatening to send her to Jersey City if he didn’t do as he was told.”

            Steve inhales sharply next to James, but Coulson’s face relaxes, just a touch, although he still looks upset. “How old is his daughter, would you say?”

            James gestures in the direction of the playroom. “Not much older than Katie and the others.”

            “Where was this? That you met Richards and his daughter?”

            “Hampton, Virginia.”

            “What were you doing there?”

            “Taking out another HYDRA facility.”

            And then, in response to Coulson’s questions, James tells the man about the Hampton facility, and the earlier facility, too, he still isn’t sure quite where that one was but he knows it was not far from the second, and he thinks he remembers a Navy base. Coulson nods slowly at that. “Norfolk. There was a S.H.I.E.L.D. base there once, but we pulled out…about seven years ago, I think. I’m not surprised HYDRA is still there. Or was, I should say.”

            James tugs his left sleeve down over his hand. “I can’t say if there are other facilities around there. I only remembered that one because I stopped in once on a mission, when my weapon jammed. I usually wasn’t told names of cities—or the names of my targets—just who to look for and where to find them. The one in Hampton was larger, they had cryo-freeze technology, so that’s where they put me back under. I’ll swear by whatever you want me to that I’d never been to the Jersey City facility before, though. _That_ I’d remember.” He stares vacantly down at the table and adds softly, “It was something they always had trouble with. If there were children involved, I…I would overcome my programming a lot faster than normal.”

            Steve starts to reach over, like he wants to grab James’s hand, but he stops himself. Coulson doesn’t seem to notice. “Did Richards tell you what was going on at the Jersey City facility, or just that it was a HYDRA outpost?”

            “He told me they were doing experiments to create new super-soldiers,” James replies.

            Coulson turns pale. “That’s why they heal so quickly,” he murmurs, as if to himself. “The accelerated healing factor…”

            “God, in _infants?_ ” Steve, too, is white as a sheet. “Director Coulson, I’m sure you’ve done research, you know…this was _not_ a painless process, even for me, and I can’t imagine HYDRA tried too hard to be gentle on their victims.”

            “They didn’t,” James says bitterly, remembering the weeks of agony in the warehouse before Steve rescued him.

            Coulson takes a deep breath. “Thank you, Agent Barnes.” He reaches over and snaps off the recorder in the middle of the table. “I think those babies owe you their lives.”

            “You’re the one who got them out of there, sir,” James says, and it feels natural to call the man _sir,_ to treat him with respect, even from James, who got into an argument with his lieutenant during the war on more than one occasion.

            “You’re the one who made it possible,” Coulson replies. “I’ve got a good team, but the five of us alone couldn’t have taken on that entire facility ourselves. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into—we were just following the tracker we’d put on Keane. If we’d walked in there, we’d probably all have been dead before we ever got to the lab.”

            A spasm of terror crosses Clint’s face. He reaches over and grips Coulson’s hand tightly. “You really ought to come out of the field, you know,” he murmurs. “You’re the director—you’re not just another agent anymore. Where would S.H.I.E.L.D. be if anything happened to you?”

            “He’s right, sir,” Steve says. “Even Fury stayed out of the field, except on special occasions.”

            “Fury never asked anyone to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself,” Coulson says, pushing back from the table. “But…I’ll take your advice into consideration.” He manages a smile. “We should probably get back. I don’t like leaving my team alone with Stark too long. Next thing you know he’ll have Fitz installing an A.I. on the bus.”

            “I don’t think you have to worry about that for a while,” Clint says quietly as he gets to his feet.

            Coulson stares at Clint. “Why not?”

            “Last night…something went wrong. I don’t know all the details, but Fitz was trying to do something in the lab and it blew up in his face. He wasn’t hurt, but the lab’s a mess. Stark spent most of the morning cleaning it.” Clint shrugs. “It was just an accident, but…I have a feeling Fitz is gonna be afraid to try again for a little while. Not until he’s sure.”

            Coulson is still staring at Clint when the door opens a moment later and a young man in a white lab coat comes in, holding something black and flat in his hands. “Oh, good, sir, I hoped you’d still be here. You know HYDRA’s Top Ten Most Wanted list? It just updated a couple minutes ago. You’ve been bumped off of the number one slot, sir.”

            Clint tries to grin. “Well, that’s good news, at least.”

            “So who is number one? Captain Rogers? Talbot?” Coulson asks, holding out his hand.

            “No, sir, Captain Rogers is still at number three and Talbot isn’t even on the list yet. But—take a look.” The man hands Coulson the flat black object.

            Coulson accepts it, takes one look, and lifts his eyebrows in surprise. Looking up, he turns the object around. It’s obviously some sort of computer, with a flat screen. On the screen is the red-and-black seal of HYDRA next to the words MOST WANTED, and immediately after that is the number 1, next to which are the black words _The Asset, codename The Winter Soldier._ Below those words is a picture of James, the black mask secure over the lower part of his face and his eyes surrounded by black paint, his expression blank and unfeeling. James can’t help but shudder at the image.

            “I think it’s safe to say you’ve pissed them off,” Coulson says dryly, turning the object back around and handing it back to the man. “Thank you, Agent Redmond, you can go. We’re just leaving.”

            The man nods and scurries off. Coulson turns back to James, and there’s a new respect in his eyes. “I’ve misjudged you. I fell into the trap I warned Fitz about, and let past actions dictate my interpretation of present deeds.” He holds out his hand. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

            James swallows nervously, but he accepts Coulson’s hand. “There’s nothing to forgive, sir,” he says quietly. “I’ve got a lot of red in my ledger, and it’s going to take more than a couple of weeks to balance the books.”

            Clint manages a crooked grin. “Natasha says the same thing.”

            “You’ve made a good start, anyway,” Coulson says. He touches a button on the recording device and pulls out a small square of plastic. “At least you’ve managed to convince HYDRA you aren’t on their side anymore—and you’ve managed to convince me.”

            Steve comes over and rests his hand on James’s shoulder—his _right_ shoulder, the real one—and it feels warm and solid and comforting. James has to stop himself from leaning into it, but he looks up at his friend, who smiles at him warmly, albeit with tears in his eyes. “Katie’s right,” he says. “Congratulations, Buck. You really _are_ a hero.”

            James smiles in reply, feeling—for the first time in forever—that maybe he does deserve this, after all. “I’m starting to believe that.”


End file.
